18 Scientist Elsewhere: At To Sew With Love (A Tutorial)

Some of you might have already seen this, but in case you didn't, I shared a tutorial for another button monogram that I made for my sister over at To Sew With Love as part of the blog swap I did with Lelanie (you can find the post here). But if you didn't see it, here's the tutorial for the blue monogram I made...

And this is what you'll need and how to do it... 

• Buttons (you'll need a bunch)
• Rhinestones (all kinds of shapes and sizes work!)
• Cardstock
• Pencil
• Picture frame
• Stencil with initial
• Hot glue gun and glue

The first thing you need to figure out is the letter you want and your stencil. Even if you don't have a fancy die cut machine, you can just print out a letter on regular printer paper and then cut it out with your handy dandy X-acto knife and voila! Insta-stencil for ZERO dollars!

Once you have your stencil, just cut your cardstock to fit into your frame and then lightly outline your letter or stencil onto your cardstock with a pencil. Keep your lines very light and sketchy. Then, you can start laying out your buttons and rhinestones, sticking within your pencil lines. (I tried to play with the exposure so you can see the lines, but I'm not sure that you can see the lines... apparently I was really trying to show you how to lightly sketch lines!)

Alternatively, you can simply use your stencil and start laying out your buttons and rhinestones there so that you can simply transfer them from that piece of paper to your cardstock and finished art (rather than trying to keep them all aligned while you glue them down one at a time).

You want to keep everything within the lines so that you get a nice clean letter (I know, normally it turns out well to color outside the lines, but it doesn't here.) You want to overlap buttons and rhinestones or create a kind of second row or level of buttons to cover the spots between the bottom buttons and rhinestones.

Once you know what you want your letter to look like (and how you want your rhinestones and buttons to be arranged), then grab your glue gun and start gluing them all down. Try to avoid all the glue gun strings, but don't worry too much about them. When you finish gluing everything down, use your pencil eraser to erase your pencil lines and you can use your eraser to try to get rid of the glue strings. Then, pop your letter into your frame and admire your work...

And you made it using stuff you already have on hand!

You can use different size frames and letters, color schemes, and vary the amount of rhinestones and buttons and get fairly different looks (and maybe spell out a word or make monograms for everyone in your home)...