Last Friday I drove up to Appleton, Wis., to attend the annual convention of the National Button Society. The event is dedicated to everything button — vendors selling buttons, hobbyists buying buttons, collectors competing for prizes with displays of category-specific buttons, button specialists presenting talks about everything from button restoration to the history of particular buttons.

I and other Bead&Button editors spent the day chatting with button folks about their personal collections and what attracted them to certain buttons. There are buttons that feature every conceivable subject — animals, birds, fish, faces, buildings, fruit, vegetables, transportation, story book characters — the list is endless.

After shopping and looking at the competition trays, I devoted about an hour to sorting through some poke boxes — a box containing interesting, but not expensive, buttons of average collection value. (Clockwise in the photo, me in the background with associate editor Tea Benduhn, Jane Johnson of Antique & Modern Buttons and a button collector.) I was interested in finding multiple identical buttons to use in a jewelry project rather than single one-of-a-kind buttons. I found some interesting vintage Czech glass buttons from the 1940s and ’50s. Watch for some button projects in future Bead&Button issues.

If you want to expand your design options for your jewelry, consider incorporating buttons into your project. Just remember, button collectors prefer that vintage buttons not be cut or altered in any way that would reduce their collection value.

Lynne