Tutorial: How to Make Nursery Button Art

As I've been scouring the Internet for cool nursery ideas, I discovered button art.  If you want, a few sellers on etsy will make a custom monogram letter out of buttons, to use as art in your baby's nursery.  I thought they looked so cool!  The art has old-fashioned charm, but it seems modern at the same time.  I wanted one! 

The going rate for an unframed piece of button art is $80. 

Having a baby is expensive.  Aside from birth-related expenses, we've bought nursery furniture, and we still have to buy the car seat and stroller, probably an infant seat, a set of cloth diapers, a breast pump, and about 900 other things like a snot-sucker and crib sheets.  So, it's pretty hard to justify spending $80 on a little piece of fabric with some buttons.  (Even a really cute little piece of fabric with some buttons.)

I decided to make one myself.  The supplies would be cheap, and sewing buttons is pretty easy, so how hard could it be?  (Answer: Not too hard, but fairly time consuming.)

I think this took me about 4 hours, and the supplies cost under $10 (or much less, depending on which supplies you already have).  I think my result was not quite as nice as the ones for sale on etsy, but close enough.  (And the baby won't know the difference.)

Want to make your own nursery button art?  Here's what I did.

Supplies:

* fabric - I used linen, which seemed like a good choice.  (My linen was $12.88/yard, and I bought .25 yard for $3.22.  The quarter yard was enough fabric to make five pieces of button art.)
* buttons - Plan to use at least 70 buttons of various sizes.  Buy a lot more, so that you have more choices as you go; I think I had about twice as many as I needed, and that was about right.  I started with little container of pink buttons that I bought at Ross for a few dollars, and when I realized most stores sell buttons a few at a time (or bigger blends in not-pink), I turned to eBay.  On eBay I bought two packs of 50 assorted pink buttons (about $6 including shipping).
* thread & needle - any.  I used an off-white thread that I already had, which matched my linen.  Embroidery floss would also be a good option.
* disappearing fabric ink marking pen - I got one that wrote in purple, and it cost $4.79. 
* frame (& coordinating paint) - to display your button art.  I bought a cheap oak frame from Walmart for $4, and I painted it a coordinating light purple to match the nursery.

Instructions:

1. Choose what letter you're going to do. 

Bold letters work well, and so do fancy frilly letters.  Skinny lines are easier to make with buttons than fat areas.  I downloaded a few free fonts from a free font website online, and I thought about using "Annabel Script Font", but then I ended up deciding to use Georgia font, which was already on my computer.

For 8X10 button art, I printed the letter I was using in 650 pt font.  This would vary depending on the font that you choose and the size that you want it, but the key is to have something that doesn't take up a full sheet of paper, but is large and seems well spaced.

I printed my letter in "outline" style to make it easier to trace.

2. Print 2 copies if you want to try laying out buttons before you sew anything, or 1 copy if you're sure you have the right size.

3. (optional) Arrange your buttons on one of the printouts.

I worried that I wouldn't have the right number of buttons for what I wanted, so I used one copy to practice.  I arranged the buttons directly on one of the printouts.  I had plenty of buttons and liked how it was going to look, so I left the buttons arranged, and planned to transfer them to the coordinating spot on my actual fabric.

4. Cut your fabric. 

Remember, a little too big is better than a little too small.  Iron the fabric.  I also used a little bit of starch to help it stay flat. On a scrap of your fabric, test your disappearing ink to make sure it actually disappears.

5. Put a letter printout beneath your fabric and trace the outline onto your fabric with the disappearing ink.

Since I used linen, I was able to do this on top of a regular table.  If you choose something thicker, you may need to tape your fabric up to a window to get some light coming through so that you know where to trace.

6. Start sewing buttons on. 

I was using regular thread (which is pretty thin) and linen (which has a loose weave), so I quadrupled my thread, because otherwise the knots came right through the fabric.  To do that, I took a long piece of thread, folded it in half, threaded both of the loose ends, and matched them up with the other end.  This worked fine for me.

I had thought that transferring buttons from the arrangement on paper to my fabric would be a piece of cake.  It wasn't.  It turns out, it's pretty hard to sew buttons very precisely where you want them, since the fabric tends to move around a little as you're sewing.  This means, sometimes you'll end up with a little extra space where you didn't want it, and sometimes the buttons will be a little closer together than you meant for them to be.  At first this bothered me, because it wasn't perfect, and then I decided it was totally fine, as long as I didn't have big gaps, or big overlaps.  If I were to do this project again, I would try using an embroidery hoop to keep my fabric flat.  I think that would partially solve this problem.  This is handmade art, though, so I decided it's okay if it looks like a person did it instead of a machine.  Another thing that I think would really help with spacing is to have tiny buttons.  I had small buttons, medium buttons, and large buttons, but I think the people who sell these on etsy have some very tiny buttons.  That would help a lot with spacing.

 

For me, I liked to start with the skinny parts of the letter, where it required small buttons and they had to be in precise places.  Then I worked away from those areas, using larger buttons first and then smaller buttons to finish small sections and work my way out.  I frequently arranged 3-4 buttons to help decide how to best lay them out on the fabric.  Sometimes after I sewed one or two buttons, I would have to decide again, because of the way the spacing was.  So, it didn't end up looking like my original arrangement, but I think that exercise was still worthwhile.

7. Rearrange buttons or re-sew buttons as necessary.

There were a couple buttons that I sewed at the beginning that I decided to adjust later.  And, there were a couple buttons that started to come detached because the knots pulled through from the back, so I needed to re-sew those too.

8. Iron your button art.  Use water to remove any disappearing ink that hasn't disappeared. 

I tried to avoid actually touching the buttons with the iron, but to the extent that they did touch the iron, they were fine.  (Which makes sense, since men's dress shirts are ironed all the time and they have buttons on them.)

9. Frame your button art, and put it on display!  (Note: these also look pretty when they are matted, or when they hang on the wall.) 

That's it!  If these instructions are helpful for anyone else, I would love to see how your button art comes out.

(And yes, we have finally settled on a name for this baby girl, and yes, it does start with "P".  More about that later.)

Nursery Update #2 - Painting (with Milk Paint)!

Last week I finished painting the nursery!

As I had planned, I used Milk Paint's "Safe Paint".  It came out really well, I think.

At first it seemed like kind of an intimidating project because I was going to have to mix the paint myself, and I'd never done that before.

Our regular mixer was totally adequate for mixing the paint up.  I mixed it up usually about a quart of paint at a time.  It doesn't last well after it's mixed, so you're only supposed to mix the amount you're actually going to use.

The people at Milk Paint told me I should expect to need two coats: the first acts as a primer, and the second coat provides complete coverage.  So, I scrubbed all of the walls, and then I primed all of them.  I finished the white walls first, just because that seemed like the easier part.  Then I put up some painters' tape and prepared to paint the accent wall!

With Milk Paint, there are only twenty colors you can choose from, and none of the color choices are pink.  Instead, they suggested I order one of two red colors: "Salem Red" or "Salmon".  Then, I could add some of the red powder to my white paint powder, and mix it up to make my own pink.  (If I wanted an orange-ier pink, I should choose Salmon, they said.)  So, I ordered Salem Red, and hoped that if I added it to white the result would be a "Little-Girl-Nursery Pink" color.

For the main background on the accent wall, I tried to create a very light pink.  (My ratio ended up being: 8 oz white powder, 1 tsp. salem red powder, 8 oz water.)  I thought it looked pretty nice.  So I went ahead and painted the accent wall.  After I painted it, it occurred to me that it looked kind of like Pepto Bismol pink, so I asked Jeff if he thought that was a problem.  (Nope!)  Fortunately, it dried into a slightly different color.  After two coats, the wall looked great.

My plan had been to use a stencil on the accent wall, and after the light pink dried, I decided I should stick to the plan instead of leaving it plain pink.  One of the nurseries that had kind of inspired me had a dark pink wall with a white damask stencil that covered the whole accent wall.  It looked a lot like wallpaper, but the girl explained that she had stenciled it, and I thought that was pretty interesting.  So, I found Cutting Edge Stencils online and debated which pattern I wanted to put on the wall.  Eventually, I decided to do polka dots.  (Keep it simple.)

So, I ordered the small polka dot stencil.  While I listened to General Conference talks last weekend, I mixed up a darker pink, and I used a (smaller) foam roller to put dots all over the accent wall.  It was so exciting to see my progress.  Suddenly, the ugly 1970's beach room had been transformed into a modern little girl nursery, and that just seemed wonderful to me.

I think it turned out beautiful!

For a little review of Milk Paint: I would probably use it again, although it did turn out a little different than I had thought it would.
1. The paint is quite flat, which seems like not the best choice for a baby's room, since I think little kids get stuff on walls.  Optionally I could have purchased an acrylic finish to paint on top, but when I was ordering I didn't want to spend another $50/gallon beyond what I was already paying. 
2. Especially on the accent wall, the paint formed tiny cracks as it dried.  It is only noticeable if you look very closely, and it is very uniform, so it seems like it could have been intentional.  Based on the instructions, I think this is a result of the milk paint kind of somehow reacting to the old paint, and pulling in different directions as it dried?  (Or something?)  I'm not sure why it was a problem primarily on the accent wall, though.  It wasn't what I wanted it to look like, but it doesn't really matter.  The baby won't care.
3. On the walls adjacent to the accent wall, where I had put painters' tape (especially the kind that is supposed to keep paint lines totally sharp), when I removed the tape it pulled up a bunch of my white Milk Paint. Maybe I needed to use delicate painters' tape, but I didn't know.  So, it was a bit of a pain to touch up.
4. Milk Paint was very easy to mix up and the "recipe" for mixing paint seemed fairly forgiving.  I used a calibrated mixing container so that my measurements were close, but I'm sure there was some variation especially among the many batches of white, and it really didn't matter.
5. Milk Paint was very easy to clean up.  I didn't even bother to put plastic down.  The room has a fake wood floor, so once I was done painting, I just used a wet washcloth to wipe the floor all the way around the room.  The few drops that had gotten on the floor washed off easily.
6. The Milk Paint really didn't smell at all.  It had a slight milky odor while it was wet, but definitely no chemical smell. After it dried, it didn't smell like anything at all.

To finish the nursery, I think I will...
- Set up the crib.
- Make a curtain to hang in front of the closet, since the closet has no doors and it has not-baby stuff in it.
- Make curtains for the window?
- Finish the fairy tale paintings.  (They've been on hold during the room painting project.)
- ???  Not sure what else.  I would love to do something with the baby's name, to really personalize her room.  Of course, it's hard to do that without picking a name!
(- Do NINE MILLION other crafty projects in my free time that I wish I had: make a mobile! make a button monogram thingie!  sew a pillow or stuffed something from a fairy tale!  re-upholster the glider! etc, etc, etc)

At a minimum, we should probably at least set up the crib.

Baby Stuff

Lately, I’ve been feeling like a human petri dish.  This past month, I’ve mostly just been getting sick and getting better, and getting sick.  My immune system is totally unconcerned with keeping me well, it seems, because whenever I come across germs, my body welcomes them and tries to give them a hospitable environment to flourish in.  It’s been a surprise to me, because even though pregnant women are in the immuno-compromised category of people you’re supposed to be careful around (like elderly people and cancer patients), I really thought I would do better than this.  Usually if I'm taking Vitamin D3, I don't get sick.  So much for that.

 Today I’m just feeling worn out and sniffling and sneezing a bunch, and that’s worlds better than the respiratory flu I had a couple weeks ago, so life is pretty good.

Other than that, pregnancy has been going well.

I had an appointment with my midwife this Monday and did my glucose test; it came back great, and my iron level was also great, so that’s good news.

When we peeked at the baby, she was not breech anymore.  My midwife said that at this point it doesn’t really matter what position she’s in, because she can still move around a lot and as her head gets bigger (and heavier) that will help her move into the right position.  But, babies that are breech when it’s time to be born are usually babies that have been breech the whole time, so it’s still good to have seen her in a different position this time.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve started to feel the baby kick (or move around?) a lot more than I used to.  Jeff felt her kick for the first time a few weeks ago, and that was cool.  The baby likes cookies.  When I eat cookies she moves more.

We bought a nursery set.  I had been watching on KSL for a used set in good condition, and we ended up buying a crib, changing table, tall dresser, and glider from a very nice family that was moving to Cyprus.  It was quite an ordeal!  The night that we picked it all up, it snowed.  So, we were trying to disassemble and move everything downstairs, (without me helping much since furniture is heavy), keep it dry, and load it up in our truck, and then secure it all. 

The hardest part was securing it.  We had brought tarps and a few bungees, and a roll of string, and we thought we had things pretty well secured, but then once we headed home we realized we had done a terrible job.  So, we got off the freeway at the first exit and parked to re-evaluate the situation.  (It was a good thing we stopped when we did, because if we had gone much farther, we definitely would have lost the mattress on the freeway.)  In the freezing cold, we tried to tie the tarps down better, and keep the drawers from coming out of the dresser, and keep the mattress from falling off.  After another hour of that, our fingers and ears were all numb, we’d done the best we could figure out, and we were also out of string, so we took State Street (instead of the freeway) and slowly drove home.  We made it.

Now, I’m disappointed with the furniture.  It’s built well—it’s solid wood, without laminate or particle board—but now I realize it’s much more worn than I realized it was when we were buying it.  So, I want to re-finish it all, but that is a Big Project, and definitely one I don’t have time for, so instead I need to just be happy and quit worrying about it.  I also want to reupholster the glider, because it has a couple stains on it.  Jeff says if it isn’t good enough, we needed to decide we were spending more, and just not buy this stuff to begin with, because refinishing furniture is way more work than it is worth.  Fair enough.  My secret plan is to be content with it for now and then either refinish it or upgrade for our next baby.  Maybe I’ll get used to it and it won’t matter.  When you're starting out, you don't have to have everything brand new and perfect. 

Even though I think the furniture looks kind of ugly, it still feels good to have things closer to ready for the baby.  Now, if the baby were born, we would have somewhere to put her, and somewhere to rock her, and a place for her clothes.  That’s progress.

We are going to paint the nursery after all.  I ordered the milk paint and it came this week.  I’ll probably write a separate post about that, because it is going to be a project, for sure.

The other thing that is on my mind lately is naming the baby.  We still don’t have a name picked out.  People keep telling me “reassuring” stories about not knowing what they were going to name their baby until it was born.  I hate those stories, because I think that if we still don’t have a name picked out when she is born, I think most likely Jeff and I won’t look at her and both instantly and independently know that she’s supposed to be named some special, previously unknown and unconsidered name.  Instead, we’ll look at her and think: “Oh, no, now she’s here and we only have a few days left to figure out what we’re naming her, but we still have no clue!”  And, usually, if you don’t know someone’s name it’s because they’re a stranger; I want to put her name on stuff, and be able to introduce her to people, and have some budding sense of her separate identity, and have her belong with us and be part of our family, and I feel like that’s disrupted by not even knowing her name or who she is.

Naming people is tough.

Other things have been happening too: we’ve been attending our Brio Birth classes, I started participating in our city’s “University” program, and my business has been…interesting lately.  I’ll save those things for another post, though, because I need to get back to being productive.