Impromptu Crafty Button Heart Picture

I found an Ikea picture frame when I was tidying up a section of the sewing room recently and decided on the spot that it needed to be put to use rather than just being re-stored in my grand relocation project.

I tracked down a little packet of heart shaped Mother of Pearl buttons that I had ordered from ebay for some long-forgotten purpose and decided they would look nice laid out in a heart teamed with some of that beautiful strip of linen offcut I have used for a few pouches lately.

I set to work lacing the linen over a piece of acid free mount board.  As you can see, the linen strip isn't quite big enough to fold over the backing card in both directions or I would have laced it vertically and horizontally.  But, it is big enough to hide behind the aperture mount so I think it will be ok, especially as this is no heirloom project, just a quick crafty make.

Then, I popped the aperture mount over the linen and laid out the buttons as I would want them to be.  I drew around a heart template onto the linen with my Chaco chalk pen first to provide a vague outline to work to.

Next, it got messy as I tried to glue the buttons to the fabric trying not destroy the visible linen with great big glue streaks.  Unfortunately, I lost some of the nice shaping of my original button layout doing battle with gluey fingers and trying to keep everything else clean, but it's only a quick project for our home not a gift or a masterpiece!

When the glue had dried and I had picked off the excess that managed to get on to the tops of the buttons (ahem) I simply put it all back in the frame and hung it on our bedroom wall.   I can't show you a pic of it there though as it reflects too much light and doesn't photograph well.  That's why this pic is taken at a funny angle - I was trying to avoid light reflections and this was the best I could do.

Eh voila! Something less to store and hoarded supplies put to a fun use!