I was totally inspired recently by a friend on Ravelry, Saturdays-child, who regularly finds and repurposes thrift items in the most unique and creative ways. Her latest find was a lazy Susan style spice rack to hold her button collection.
“Buttons?!” I may have quietly screeched at the computer. You see, I have a long-held addiction to button collecting. As a child I took the cut-off bottoms from a pair of my mother’s khakis, sewed them into one long ribbon and then sewed tons and tons buttons on them, creating, essentially, a long, long strip of buttons, This, I realized as an adult, was a little useless, since I couldn’t actually see the buttons except when I dragged them out of my closet, and one big long strip of buttons is a little hard to manage unless you are going to wear it as a scarf. So I undid all of the sewed-on buttons and they went into my notions drawer, where they have languished in the dark. So, of course, nothing would do but I get my own spinny button holder, stat.
I went on eBay and immediately fell in love with a $3 vintage spice rack that had brightly colored lids, which thrilled my OCD tendencies to no end. I won the auction (yey!) and the day the rack arrived I immediately dragged out my mess of buttons and started organizing them. My biggest issue is always trying to dig through all of the brown, white and black buttons to find the fun colored ones I need (or simply want to admire like a magpie inspecting it’s strips of bent aluminum and tin), so this was a perfect solution for me. All of my colored buttons are wonderfully segmented and I have a glorious wheel of color now!
I highly recommend finding or repurposing a spice rack for your button collection. It’s dead easy to do and cute as a button to top it off. And it spins. Whee!
Exchanging Fire 