Skull Art with Vintage Buttons

Here I am again, pulling out a project from the Sadie Archives. You see, this skull art I made with a thrifted embroidery hoop and some vintage buttons never made it onto my blog. It dates back to 2014 and it’s taken me nearly 10 years to dig it back out for publishing.

Sigh. It happens. Sometimes I run out of time to post a project, sometimes I second guess if it’s good enough to share on the blog, etc.

But, we’re actually dealing with some medical issues at home and my attention has been on my husband, not the blog. He had gall bladder removal surgery earlier this week.

So, an archives post was the perfect thing to publish this week. It started out because even back then, I had a love of crafting with vintage sewing supplies.

Which, of course, includes old embroidery hoops (something I’ve used in many blog posts before)…

And vintage buttons, which I’ve collected over the years but rarely crafted with.

So, I set out to create a skull out of vintage buttons for Halloween decor, using up some of those old sewing supplies I’d collected!

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Prepping the Frame for Skull Art

The first step was painting the embroidery hoop black. I did that with basic craft paint, doing two coats on each part of the hoop.

Next, I searched online for some skull clip art and found one that was a good size for my hoop. It was of a sugar skull, as you can see, but that was fine. I just needed the basic shape(s) to trace out.

Besides…the sugar skull clip art gave me an idea for the future. Bear with me!

Then, I headed to Joann Fabric because I needed two things: black fabric for the background and some netting (or similar) to use as a template. And talk about sheer dumb luck- I found both things in the remnants bin!

You just never know about that remnants bin. It’s like a thrift store- sometimes you hit the jackpot, sometimes you completely strike out…but it’s always worth looking through!

Anyway, with the embroidery hoop painted, I cut out a square of black fabric (satin!) a couple of inches larger than the hoop on all sides. I set it over the inner hoop, pushed the outer hoop over it, tightened the hoop, and tugged the fabric taut. I trimmed off the extra and was left with this as my canvas.

Button Crafts with a Halloween Twist

Now for the fun part- the buttons! But I needed a template first, so I laid out some netting over my printed skull and pinned it to the paper.

Then, I simply cut out the perimeter of the skull, as well as the eyes, nose area, and mouth (cutting through the netting and the paper, since that was easier). After that, I laid the skull-net-template on my black satin canvas and also pinned it in place.

Now, and I don’t have a photo of this, I kept the cut-out paper skull and carefully laid out my white buttons over it. When I was happy with the arrangement, I simply translated the placement to my hoop and stitched each button in place over the netting.

But I do have a pretty photo of white buttons and notions that I absolutely swooned over! These fancy jars of buttons were too pricey for me at the time (grrr!) and I still kick myself for not splurging on that front one.

Nothing quite haunts us like the vintage we left behind…

Anyway, I just kept stitching the buttons in place over the netting. It wasn’t going to be a perfect translation of the skull shape, but hopefully close enough to work.

I also removed the straight pins holding the netting to the satin as I made progress with the buttons. 

Lastly, I used my thread scissors to snip off any netting that peeked out past the buttons. Ready to see how my skull art turned out?

Skull Art with Vintage Buttons

When the last button was stitched on and the last bit of netting trimmed away, this is how my skull art looked.

Ok, it’s definitely not a spooky skull, that’s for sure. The vintage buttons are way too sweet to be spooky. But he’s kinda-sorta cute, don’t you think? And such a fab way to use all those boring white buttons!

I’m sorry it took me so long to finally publish this project. But perhaps if you’ve been hoarding buttons all this time, this project might spark an idea. And it certainly doesn’t have to be a…

Skele-button! No, wait. A SKULL-E-BUTTON!

Yep, you know me- any chance to make a pun! And remember when I mentioned that the sugar skull printout gave me an idea? Well…

Who knows, maybe I’ll follow up this skull art project with another, more colorful one. I certainly have the buttons to do it.

And if you’d like another idea for embroidery hoops during spooky season, perhaps this DIY spider web might inspire you!

Or these spooky silhouettes that “magically” float inside their embroidery hoops…

Craft on!

S

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