So many buttons, so little time

You know how it is when you sew, and you start to hoard collect sewing notions, right?  Because you never know what you might need, and it's great to have stuff like thread, buttons, snaps, hooks and eyes, ect. on hand right? Yeah, me too! It's just that, well, I have no idea how I ended up with this many buttons. (Is it like The Trouble with Tribbles - are they reproducing in those little button jars?) I decided last week that I absolutely need to start finding some button projects and use up some of my button stash.

I had this idea to try to sew buttons on a fabric band to make a bracelet, and stitched a few samples up over the weekend.

I started with a thin fabric strip, and inserted an elastic band sewn in one end as a base for stitching on buttons. The elastic band slips over the first button on the other end of the strip. This worked out pretty well, but I discovered it was kind of difficult to space the buttons out along the strip evenly. One of my first bracelets was stitched up with buttons that were all a little different.

Then I tried buttons that were all the same size, and that made it easier to figure the spacing. These are my favorites, and I'm still wearing the gray, red, and black one right now.

And last, I tried using some patterned fabric and spaced the buttons wider apart.

These looked pretty cool as I was making them, but I wasn't so excited when I slapped one on my wrist. By the way, it's pretty dang hard to take a picture of your own arm wearing a bracelet...

Still am not sure if I'm making many more of these. The only ones I really liked are the bracelets made of buttons that are all the same size, and most of my button stash are unmatched and slightly different sized butttons. Hmmm.

Do you have any great button crafts to share or know of some great project links? I am in definite need of some more ideas!