Grandmother's Buttons - Do-it-yourself button jewelry

[caption id="attachment_500" align="aligncenter" width="512" caption="Bakelite bracelets you can create from your own button collection"][/caption]By Susan Davis:

Few things can transport me back to childhood like the sight of an old tin brimming with buttons from the 1920s-'60s.  It was just such a tin that my mother let the 5-year-old me play with while she sewed dresses for my three teen-aged sisters. 

Such memories inspired these bracelets, each made with ten buttons of Bakelite and casein from the 1930s.  You don't have to use buttons that are that old; any good button tin will yield enough colorful buttons to make an interesting if funky bracelet.

[caption id="attachment_502" align="alignleft" width="226" caption="Detail of reverse of DIY bracelet"][/caption]

To make the bracelet, drill small holes on either side of the larger buttons with a Dremel tool, link them together with jump rings and glue the smaller button on top.  Then add the additional jump rings and bead to one end, and smaller jump ring and clasp to the other.

Materials:

5 vintage plastic buttons, about 1 inch  in diameter (I used a combination of Bakelite and casein)
5 smaller decorative vintage plastic buttons (I used all Bakelite here)
9 large brass jump rings
1 small jump ring and brass lobster claw clasp
1 small bead on a head pin

Tools:
needle nose jewelry pliers
Dremel tool with small drill
E-6000 glue

[caption id="attachment_504" align="alignright" width="226" caption="Reverse image of second DIY bracelet"][/caption]

One warning for this project--realistic Bakelite buttons such as the crab and pelican are VERY valuable!  You may not want to subject them to glue; I used just a tiny dab to hold the crab on and drilled a larger hole in the center of its base button so that I could leave the shank on.  I made this bracelet years ago, and find the oil-black pelican to be a sadly ironic now in wake of the BP oil spill!

Note how I drilled a larger hole in the middle of the second button to preserve the shank of the valuable Bakelite crab,

I don't know if I would still drill holes in the fabulous large Bakelite "cookie" on the far right--as the years go on, I become more and more aware of the need to preserve special buttons in their original state.