Glass Buttons

My friend, Judy Perez, loves to knit. Since she has moved north to Chicago, she's had motivation to turn all that gorgeous wool yarn available into wonderful sweaters. Her latest, Silver Belle, was so inspiring that I thought it deserved handmade buttons. I spent several hours last Saturday and yesterday making a variety of glass button styles, experimenting with colors, shapes and accents. Here's a sampling of my favorites so far:


These are fashioned by winding a regular small spacer bead onto a mandrel, then adding a ball of glass to that and flattening. For most, I accented the center with big dots of glass around the perimeter, sometimes squashed into petal shapes. Some are metallic silver glass; some have violet shift Pearl-Ex mica; some have silver glass dots.

Here's how they look front and back:


I did make a few sets yesterday of my favorite design, in two different glasses. Now to see what Judy likes, so that I can get a set or two shipped off for her to try. Oh, by the way, they are roughly 1" in diameter.