Thursday, December 8, 2011

What I've Been Up To

I should be getting my Christmas shopping and the rest of the decorating done but I took a time out to play with some ideas that have been bouncing around, waving their arms, in the back of my head. There's always tomorrow, right?  Well, at least until December 25th!
 I made up a new altered Altoids tin.  The girl second from the right is my sweet Grandma, circa 1915.  The caption says "The girls of summer".  I cannot imagine how you could swim in those ruffled bathing suits.  They had to weight a ton when they were wet.  Maybe that's why she never liked the water.
I sorted and cleaned a big bunch of mother-of-pearl buttons so I could fill some test tubes I have had for ages.  I auditioned all kinds of ideas for embellishing the corks on tops and finally decided to just keep it simple with one white shoe button on top of each. 
The button gift tags are made with some beautiful playing cards and my button stash.  I created  rectangles with a pretty olive green border in Word and printed them on vintage ledger paper then glued them on the back so there is a place to write.  The buttons are not permanently attached so they can be removed and used if the gift-ee wants.  It's a little late for this year but this would be a fun way to use all the saved Christmas cards most of us have stashed away.
I think I have it out of my system, which is good, because this weekend I MUST get busy with the shopping and get the living room tree put up!

5 comments:

Into Vintage said...

Sometimes you have to what you have to do before the ideas flee. Love those button-filled test tubes!

Andy's Attic said...

It all looks very pretty. Love those card...I think even I might be able to do that :>)
Annette

My Vintage Mending said...

Oh those are fantastic. Button test tubes! I love them. Who couldn't love a button card...My shopping nearly complete, now I can play. Smiles...Renee

Annette said...

What wonderful ideas! The vintagey feel of the cards is perfect with the buttons and the test tube makes me think of candy. But the buttons are better than candy! And I love the tin too. My grandmother would have loved having her picture on it!!

Laurie said...

Love it all!