Button Wall Art Tutorial

Hello, everyone!  I'm Krista, the owner of Kolor By Krista, where I create fun and colorful crocheted accessories and home decor.

Everyone loves a fun little craft to add a nice pop of color to their home!  This one can be used in any room, from your living room to your bathroom!  I have seen pictures of these button-art signs all over, but have struggled to find a tutorial I really like.  These specific instructions are for the LOVE sign shown below, but they can be easily modified for any design you’d like!

Supplies:

• Canvas(es) – any size will do!  Pick your design and then pick your canvas size.  This project uses four 5″ x 7″.
• Fabric – you don’t want anything too busy.  The black and white one I chose is a bit much, but I don’t mind it.
• Buttons – I got my buttons at Joann.  They are a little spendy for buttons, but there was a 30%-off sale at the time.  (anyone have a better place to buy them?)
• Hot glue gun – or some other way to attach buttons to fabric
• Extra hot glue sticks – I used 3 between my two projects
• Iron
• Staple gun – or some other way to attach your fabric to your canvas
• Scissors
• Tape

Step 1:  Print design

For my heart canvas, I just found a heart picture I liked on Google and printed it off.

For the LOVE sign, I opened up PowerPoint and sized my slides to my canvas size (5″ x 7″).  You will want to be sure that your slide size matches your canvas size so you can clearly see what your design will look like on your canvas.

I then put a textbox with the word “love” in all capital letters on one slide and chose a nice, yet simple font (Cooper Black).  After I was happy with how it looked I deleted the word “love” and created four slides, with one letter on each, and printed them.

Note that you may need your letters to be slightly different font sizes to make them fit.  Here are the font sizes I used for this example:

•  L – 450
• O – 440
• V – 425
• E – 450.

Here’s what you should have (minus the part where I forgot to take a picture before starting to cut).

Step 2: Cut design

Now it’s time to cut out your shape outlines, cutting right on the line.  You will be using the white part of the paper, not the printed part.  If you have a letter like “O” or “B”, make sure you save the inside parts of the letter as well.

Step 3: Iron fabric

When ironing, remember that it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect.  If there are stubborn wrinkles that you can’t get out you can always be sure to pull your fabric extra tight when attaching it to the canvas.  I used steam on mine to get it to cooperate a bit more.

Step 4: Cut fabric

Now it is time to cut out your fabric.  Unless your craft store is super careful, your fabric probably won’t be perfectly straight, but that is just fine, it doesn't need to be perfect as you can see from my pictures.

Place your canvas in a corner of the fabric and cut around it, leaving about 1″ on each side.

Step 5: Attach fabric to canvas

Place your fabric on top of your canvas.  Do your best to make sure there is an even amount of fabric hanging off of each side.  But more importantly, make sure that the fabric design is straight.  Even if it means that the fabric is sitting crookedly.

Flip the canvas over and staple the first two sides down.  I used 3 staples per side.

Note: If you have fabric hanging over the wooden part of the canvas, trim it a little more.  Extra fabric hanging over will make them hard to hang on the wall because your hook/nail will get stuck on the fabric instead of the wood.

The remaining two sides are a little trickier, but not bad.  Especially if you wrap presents!  Fold the corners up just like you would when wrapping a present.

First, fold the top down.

Then, pull the triangle on the edge in towards the canvas.

And lastly, fold the edge of your fabric that is touching the table up onto the top of the canvas and staple it down.

Repeat for the other corner and add an extra staple in the middle for good measure.

It should look like this once you have all four sides attached.

Flip it over and TADA!!

Repeat for any extra canvases you have.

Step 6: Tape outline to the canvas.

Be sure to get it straight and centered!  I cut my letters down as much as I could because it was hard to tell if things were lined up with a big piece of paper flopping around.

Remember to include the middle pieces, if needed.

Step 7: Add buttons!

This is where it gets fun, if you like puzzles like I do!  I started with the smallest parts of each letter first.  I would lay out a few buttons to make sure to get a good fit and then glue them down.

This is what I laid out before doing any gluing.

Then, just continue until your design is covered with buttons!  I highly recommend laying buttons out in groups before gluing them down.  You don’t want to glue a couple and then find that you don’t have any buttons that fit the spaces that are left between the design’s edges or other buttons.

Here’s what my “L” looked like when I was finished.

And my “O”.

Step 8: Remove the paper to see your masterpiece!

Here’s what my “L” looked like.  As you can see, the bottom is a little crooked.  This happened because I was too worried about keeping the buttons inside the lines!  I should have let them expand outside the bottom-left edge so I could make a straight line.  At first I didn't care, but I later went back and pulled those buttons off so I could fix it.

Repeat steps 6-8 for any additional canvases you have and that’s all there is too it!

It is definitely time-consuming, but it isn't difficult!  A great lazy Sunday afternoon project.

Thanks for that wonderful tutorial Krista. 

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FEATURING MICHELE

Meet Michele, a talented photographer from VanillaExtinction.



"Absolutely stunning! I feel like I can smell the gardenia"

"a true artist`s eye for beauty"

"Intense and beautiful--you can see the cat 'magic' in those eyes"

Just a few things customers have said about Michele`s work.

Let`s talk to the woman behind the lens.




What motivated you to start your shop?
In 2009 I went through a major depressive episode that lasted for months. I had no trigger for it. It just happened. I kept it to myself until the time when I realized that I needed help and support or I was not going to survive. Anyway, after I began to feel better I bought myself a $100 point and shoot camera and the rest, as they say, is history. I fell head over heels in love with photography! I shared my photos with family and was getting such positive feedback which, in turn, fuelled my passion. My wonderful daughter, Kelly, started to encourage me to start an Etsy shop. I thought she was being foolish and just trying to bolster my well being and self esteem. She took it upon herself to start the wheels of Vanilla Extinction turning by doing all of the basic work of setting up shop and the rest is history.



What is your favourite item in your shop and why?
The items in my shop that mean the most to me are the photos of my dog and cat, India and Mikey. I have received the most amazing feedback from so many people in regards to the feelings some of these photos evoke and that is what, to me, photography is all about.


What inspires your work?
Evoking feelings. To hear someone tell me that they were brought to tears by one of my photos (and that has happened on a few occasions) is truly inspirational.

Why did you join this team?
I want to expand my horizons by working with others and create more than just photo prints. I feel that there is so much talent here on Etsy and that collaborating with other artists is going to be beneficial to me and to my customers.


What do you think is the most important thing needed to form a good collaboration?
Trust. Unfortunately, our society has people that are just waiting for the opportunity to take advantage of someone else's talent and good nature. I want to trust that whomever I may be collaborating with has the same ideals and trust for my art as I have for theirs and the longing to come up with something wonderful together.

What is the most daring thing you`ve ever done?
It depends on what you mean by daring. I have never jumped out of an airplane or swam with sharks but I have been a single mom of three young children.


Do you sell your work on any other sites or venues?
I sell my photography on a few other sites. I have four stores on Zazzle which allows me to use my photography on hundreds of different items. I have recently opened a store on Fine Art America and am in the process of filling it with my photography. And I have my own website as well.

Thanks Michele. I`m in awe of your talent.

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