I searched around for buttons. Buttons are more expensive than I anticipated. I bought a couple different packages at Walmart. I printed out the outline of a capital "E" on an piece of cardstock. It wouldn't center right. I figured I could trim the edges as needed.
I also bought a heavy duty glue stick. I ended up using a combination of the glue stick and hot glue.
This is how it looked after gluing all the buttons.
I felt it was missing something, so I went out in search of brads. They are much smaller and could fill in the holes in between the buttons. I ended up with some glittery ones and some very tiny solid colored ones. This was a little tedious punching them through the paper and all, but it definitely helped out.
There have been two white shadow boxes hanging in Eva's room since she was born. I was pretty much done with what had been hanging in them for the past four years. I took one of the frames and my button E and headed to Hobby Lobby hoping to find a matte in a perfect shade of pink, in a pre-cut size. No such luck. I picked out a perfect shade of pink in a large matte, and had it custom made. The girl told me it would only cost a couple dollars, plus I could use my 40% off coupon. Wow. What a deal. She filled out an invoice, which I didn't actually look at, and I left the store.
A couple days later, the store called me. Something made me check the invoice before I left the house. I hadn't realized that although the matte was not very expensive, I was also being charged for the labor of cutting it and assembling the frame. That pushed the price of the matte up to about $13. That was more than I wanted to pay, but I was kinda stuck at this point. Also, you can't use the coupon on the labor part of framing and matting (apparently).
I was pretty thrilled with how it looked. It's a bit uneven due to the buttons and the fact that it didn't print centered in the first place. I maybe should have used a white matte so it wouldn't be so obvious, but it looks really cute in Eva's room now. It was finished the night before her 4th birthday party, so I displayed it on the hutch next to the food table.
I should also take a better picture of the finished product. But its after midnight right now. I'm 35 weeks pregnant and I'm pretty happy that I'm even posting this much. Now I'm obsessed with buttons, especially button monograms. I've bought a bunch of pale pink ones and hopefully will have another E for Baby Elise finished before her arrival . . . keep you posted.
