Button Tree

Have you seen the button trees that people have been making this fall? As soon as I saw the original one created by Tia Bennett on Two Peas and read Ali Edwards' post about her button trees, I knew I wanted to make one. I loved the colors Ali used and decided I would create one in similar colors to match our new green and gold decor.

I wanted to use green, brown, gold, white, and red buttons for my tree. In addition to using buttons in my stash, I chose the Harvest Grab Bag buttons by Buttons Galore & More, since that mix appeared to contain most of those colors. I couldn't find them locally, so I had to order them online, and when they arrived, I discovered that the mix included a LOT of purple and orange buttons (guess I'll be ready for Halloween, huh?). After sorting out all the unusable ones, I became concerned that I wouldn't have enough to cover the tree, but alas, it worked out almost perfectly.

My tree is 9 inches high, and I used close to 250 buttons to make it. (No, I didn't count them! :-) I know that since I used an entire box of 250 pins.) Tia's instructions worked very well: I started with the largest buttons and pinned them randomly to the tree, then I added the medium buttons, each one touching a large one. Finally, I filled in with the smallest buttons. That step was the hardest part, and I still see some gaps that need to be covered with buttons.

I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with the top of the tree yet. Tia's tree has corsage pins in the top, but I'm thinking about doing something different with mine.

Total time to make the tree was about 2.5 hours. Not bad at all, and it was surprisingly fun, too. And, better yet, I actually like how it turned out.