Nutcracker costume - Fritz

So, all day Saturday, I worked on the Fritz costume. Sadly, I didn't finish it. What was stopping me? Buttons! Nope, not my button hole function on my sewing machine, but actual buttons. I couldn't decide what buttons I wanted to use on the vest. and well, no buttons means no way to make the correct size button hole. So, I dumped my entire box of buttons onto my table, and went through each and every one. I picked out the ones I like the most, and took pictures of them against the gold fabric of the vest.

All of this work, and I still wasn't happy. I really wanted to like the pearl shank buttons, but they were too white, and just slightly bigger than I'd prefer for this size of a vest.
So, last night the boys and I (hubby had to work) had dinner with my parents at their house. After dessert Mom and I went up to her craft space to look through her stash of buttons to see if I could find 2-3 matching buttons. Well, we didn't find any, but Mom reminded me that I could change the color of buttons using embossing powder that we usually use for scrapbooking. Yes, my mother is a crafty woman. And yes, it does run in the family.
So, we did a test run on some buttons, I liked what I saw, so she sent me home with a new embossing pad to keep and some gold embossing powder to borrow. And here's how I made my own gold buttons.

Left to right: Heat Gun, Embossing ink, test buttons from yesterday, and embossing powder.

"ink" the button with embossing ink.

Dip into embossing powder. (make sure tweezers don't go all the way through the button holes or else you'll emboss those too)

Heat it up with heat gun until all embossing powder is melted.

Allow to dry.

New button next to original.

Now to do the back of the button.

Oops, my tweezers damaged the front. Note to self, start with back first.

Better way to dry to avoid smudges.

Perfect match! I'm in love!

Yeah, I was feeling pretty awesome this morning. And here is how the whole outfit turned out.

Kit as Fritz:

With jabot tucked in to show off pretty "new" buttons

With the lace trimmed jabot out.

There will be no sewing today since someone is buying my dining room table (AKA my cutting table) tonight, so I had to clear it off. I'll be picking up my smaller dining room table and chairs tomorrow while the kids are at school. I'm sew excited!!!

Until next time...

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