Handmade Paper Buttons

1. Welcome!: Imagine transforming scraps of paper into beautiful handcrafted buttons, tiny works of art with layers of texture, color, and details. In this class, you will learn how to create these standing paper buttons step by step. Now let's have a look at the steps. 2. Collage: Okay. First, I'm going to start with. These are my mixed media papers and these are some of the printouts of my old artworks. The first paper that I'm going to create is basically adding book pages on one of my papers. Now you can do this on any blank pages if you want or I am thinking I will just reuse a few of my old artworks that I've been lying around and I'm not really using them. I might as well use those for this one. I don't want to use the one that I will use for texturing. I'm just deciding which one. This has a lot of black areas. I want to keep this for the textured papers and probably even this one as well. Okay. Let's see. For the first paper I am going to create on this one. Let me get this out of the way and uh, you can do two of these pages also, but I'm just going to show you one. I'm just using this paper to protect my table. And here are my book pages. I have a few of the dictionary pages that I just ripped off from my old dictionary, and a few book pages. You can use newspapers also, but I feel newspapers are too thin paper, if you have a little thicker paper, that's probably better. All right. So let me take probably two pages from here, one page from this, and we are going to cover up this paper completely with this page. I think this is going to be enough to cover up this page. Now let me glue this down. To glue it down, I am going to use a brush and I'm using mot podge. You can use any glue that you have. Simple PVA glue also is fine, or actually, I think I will use PVA glue. Here is a PVA glue. It's like the craft one. It's very cheap or you can use gel medium mouse. What if you have at home? A Now, the complete papers have been stuck. One thing that I like to do is just praise over with a knife, just to make sure there are not much wrinkles. Honestly, I do like the wrinkles, but just a little bit so that there are no bubbles inside the pages. Here is the paper completely glued. I will leave this to dry for some time. Meanwhile, we will start working on the other page. For the next page, I am thinking of using this one, like I said, and we don't want to have the artwork very prominent when we cut out our buttons. That's why we are going to cover it up a little bit with brown and white tissue paper. I actually like using brown tissue papers more so here is my brown tissue paper. This is basically a bamboo tissue. That's why it's brown and here is a white tissue paper. I like using brown more than white, but I'm going to use both so that you get idea of how both of them look like, and then of course, it's your personal preference, which one you will use. The way I would use this is first, I would just open up the entire tissue paper. Crumple it and it's ready to be glued. Right now, you cannot see any of the to, but the moment we glue it down, you will see it's all going to start getting visible. This is the other one. Similarly, let me prepare the white one as well. I think for the white, I just need half of it. Maybe I need a little bit more. I'll just take out just a bit more, crumple it, and everything is ready to be glued. Now for this one, I'm going to use mot patch. The first step is I will just apply honestly, I just feel there is hardly any difference between mot pot and the PVA glue. I'm using all sorts of glue that I use to give you a taste of how each of the things are experimenting for myself as well as for you. Now while laying it down, don't lay too flat like this. The reason I like I crumpled it at the first place is so that those wrinkles are nicely visible. What I'm going to do is wrinkle it up like this, a little bit torse it's fine. We can always cover it up and just glue it like this. Let's cover this part as well. I realized I crinkled it a bit too much, so I'm trying to do it a little less on this side. Honestly, it doesn't matter much, but yeah, it's spread out over a little bit more surface area because I didn't crinkle it that much. So that's done. A little bitty store, so I am going to take one more of this tissue and just add a little bit over here. Let's do the white. See, after gluing both the white and brown side by side, I feel the brown gives more visibility to the artwork and white covers it more. What I'm going to do is in this few let out places, I'm going to add more of brown. I have worked with brown tissue paper earlier when I created my paper buttons, but I've never done it with white, I just wanted to experiment with white and see how it looks and I think it covers a bit too much. See, I like this place. It's so white. Not much of the artwork is visible, but I think it's gorgeous, all the texture. All I'm going to do now is just go over with a little bit more of the glue and paste it down as much I can. A All right, so here is the paper. It's completely glued and you can see the gorgeous textures. So it doesn't have to be the painting that I have here. It can be any painting that you have, like, you know, collage papers or whatever colored surface that you have, uh, you can use it on that. But if you don't have anything in the next video, I'm going to teach you how you can create colored surface, not a painting, just a colored surface, um, to use this technique on. Okay, so here is my second paper ready. But Okay, while the first one was drying, I decided to do one more of the book page collage. So I am using one of my old artworks again, and I am using the old book pages to cover it up. But this time, you will see me tearing it into more number of pieces and collaging instead of just one layer because I realized that after doing the first one, the artwork was starting to show through from the back a little bit. And that's why I am tearing it into smaller pieces than the first one. And uh, creating more than one layer of book pages collage. And also, I wanted to do this because I really like this process of clearing and collaging and gluing. It's a really therapeutic process for me. So that's why I did this. I did one more, which is off camera. So I ended up doing three of these pages. I I Okay, here is the first one that I did with you, and you can see some of the artworks from the behind, like I said, was showing through. So I used some more of the book pages to go over it once again. So if you're doing this on a blank sheet of paper, this will not happen to you. But even so if you want to add more number of pages or, you know, tear small pages and do it, then you can totally do that. Okay. So here are my three pages which have completely dried, which are basically made with old book pages, ephemes, whatever papers that you have lying around. You have seen me do this and this one, probably, and this is the one that I did off camera, which is also mixing of the two pages, but the top page I kept completely dictionary page just to give this vintage look because this is a little off whitish color. So these are the three pages that I have and now I'm thinking how I can alter them just a little bit, not too much. Now since this one has quite a bit of white, I am thinking of adding a little bit of JO on top of this and see how that looks. So here is my gesso, and you need a completely dry brush for this. I'm just going to add. I'm just going to take really less amount of gesso and just brush through some of the areas especially on the joinings on the edges, and also I want to hide a little bit of the words, don't want them to be visible. But you'll still see bit of text in the background, but you won't be able to really read them. Here is the first page that I've covered with JSO almost, but you can still see some of the colors visible. I'll let it dry and then I'll see what I can do on top of this. For this one, what I was thinking was just adding a little wash of raw umber maybe, and make it even more vintagyO thinking I'm just thinking out loud with you guys. Um, I'm thinking I'll leave it as it is because it already has a pretty vintagy feel, so I won't really do much to it. Rather, on this one, which is a mix of both the colors, I'm just going to add a little raw umber wash or burnt umber wash. I'll see what I can do. So here is a butter paper, and here is my raw umber. So just take it out just a bit of it, and I'll keep it under this paper so that the color doesn't seep into the table. We just need tiny bit of raw umber, not much at all. And I'm thinking I'll use a big round brush because if I use a small round brush, then you have to go multiple times. Now I'm just going to go over it and color it up. This is a technique that you can use if you don't have vintage paper. What you can do is just add any paper and then color it with a raw umber and you will be able to create a vintage look. If that's what you like, I totally like this vintage look. Here all the words are visible, but they are covered in colour. Here is the second page. I think we'll let it dry and we'll see how this looks. This one has also drill, almost dried, I think. Yeah, it's dried. The one we did JSOF this one also, now we get to see all different types of things with these three and you can choose the one that you like the most and you can do only that if you want to. For this one on top of the Jesu paper, we are going to add the raw umber wash. And you see because we have added GSO, some of the brush marks are showing through. So the raw umber wash is going to go inside the crevices of S, I haven't created really much of our texture with the brush, um, but just a little bit whatever brush marks has happened, um, it will create good textures for the bunt umber wash. Okay, so that's easy quick and easy. Our paper background is done. We'll let it dry and we'll come back to all three of them. 3. Acrylic Play: Okay, for this one, I am going to use a mixed media paper. It's I think 240 or 230 or 240 GSM, not very thick, but thick enough to be a paper button. So I am placing it on a rough sheet of paper on which I can work on. And the three colors that I have chosen are blue, green. This is thalo blue, olive green, and pink. It's called primary red. All right, so whatever colors you have, media, I will use a little bit of burn Sienna also. I'm not too sure. I might and GSO, of course. This is where I keep my Gesso, and we are going to color our surface. The way I like to do this is just add a few colors. It's absolutely random. We're not creating a painting. We're just creating blobs of paint. Oops bit too much of burn sienna and a bit of pink. Now I think I will start on this side. Start mixing the colors. I don't want to mix these two too much, so I'm just starting. You see, I am leaving my brush marks on the paper. I'm not really trying to blend it all. Targe it on covering your entire paper. That's all. You don't have to do anything else. This area is pretty light pink, which I like. I'm keeping some areas really dark and some areas light. This is very light area. This part is completely covered. Checking if there is any white space visible. No. Now let's move on to the green and blue area. This part is very dark and now the remaining places, I'm just going to add more of white and start blading this. Wherever I feel this has dried, I'll just make a few marks of this color on this side and on the other side. Just a few areas probably. Again, I don't want to override my brush marks, the brush marks that has already happened. Maybe you can pick up a little bit of pink from here and add a little bit here. Really doesn't matter. Covered up the whole page. If you don't like one button, you can just throw it away. On the green side, I just want to add a little bit of light values. This is pretty dark here. Just adding a few of the light values. And there it is. Color surface with acrylics. Now, I will leave it for drying and then we will see what we can do with this. Have a look up close at all the textures, the brush marks that you can see. Look at this brush mark over here. I really like this and also the brush mark. So you watched that I did not go over it multiple times, just one strokes however the brush mark came and I just left it at that. All right. Now I let it keep it aside for drying. And with the same brush, I am going to move on to another mixed media paper. And here I will show you what we can do. No washing my brush, I have few of the leftover colors and all I'm doing is making just brush marks with my gesso on the paper. Again, let the brush marks be visible even though it is white. See Look at the brush marks. You have to add quite a bit of SO by the way. Otherwise, these brush marks will not be visible. Quite a bit of gesso and make good amount of brush marks, key layer of eso, I would say. Wiping off the leftover paint from my brush on the page. You see, this is one kind of texture that I have created all over the page. And on this area, what I'm trying to do is just add my brush in this way and that creates a different kind of texture. Why not try different type of experimenting with different types of textures on our pit. This side I'm not going to touch. This is the complete brush stroke side. On this side, I just thought we will add a different type of the color doesn't matter. Whatever color is coming up now because we're going to color over it. I think I like this more, but I'm just giving you all sorts of options. I don't want to cover up too much with this. I want to have the brush mask. But I hope you understood. You can experiment with your brush and see if you like different types of textures or what you like and do that more of that. I think this much is enough for this texture. Now is the drying time. You have to be patient. I'm going to keep it out in the sun for some time, and I will be back soon. Here is the page. It's not completely 100% dried. You can see here a little bit wherever there is a thick paint that is not dried, but otherwise, the whole page has died dried. What I'm going to do on this colored paper is now add mile of tissue paper. I'm thinking of using this one because this is thinner than the white one and it will help show more of the colors from underneath. I'm just going to take out more of this. I think that's going to be enough for the time being, let me just crumple them and make them And what I'm thinking now is that I'm not going to cover the entire paper. I'll just cover it in bits and parts and maybe a little bit will be left out from the underneath paper. I'm just thinking. I don't know if I'll be able to do that, but let's see. See, I initially decided to cover up my papers with crumpled tissue paper because I was working on my old artworks and I didn't want them to be exactly visible. Like, you know, it looks like a piece of landscape. So that is why initially I decided to cover up my paintings with tissue papers, just to, you know, veil them a little bit so that they're not absolutely visible what they are. But for people like this, we can where we have just blotches of colors and no matter wherever you cut, it is always going to have some abstract color. Then probably you don't need the texture, you can actually do this page and just cut it out without adding any tissue paper. But I like the texture of the tissue paper as well and that's why I am doing this. As you can see, little bit is left out over here, which is what I have intentionally left out. But let's see. I like this dark area which is not covered with the tissue paper. So I think I'm going to leave this area like this and just maybe add a few more here. I really like this area as well, but I just want to cover up a little bit of it. I think this is looking fantastic, almost like a piece of art, abstract painting. I love it like this. I'm going to leave it like this. Just little bit of the background color showing through and some covered up with tissue paper. 4. Watercolor Play: So here is the J sOT paper, which is completely dried and you can see the brush marks are still pretty visible and it will become even more visible once I start applying the watercolor on top of it. Here is a very basic 24 color watercolor set. Nothing fancy, very basic one, very cheap one also. What I like to do is just pray it with some water first. I like keeping it quite messy. Here is my cup of water and a brush, a round brush. The size, I don't know. I cannot see it. It should be something around 67 or eight. Okay. Now, all we are going to do is just like how we did with acrylics with the watercolor also, we are just going to play on this paper and you'll see that the brush marks will become more visible. Let me add one of the color. This is raw umber, which is my favorite color. Just adding some of it. You see? Add whatever color you fancy. There is no rules here. This is your playground now, so let's play. Let's just play however you want. As you can see, I like mixing all the colors into each other. I am going to make it pretty colorful and just add whatever color I feel like adding. This is the area where I did the brush texture, like the dabbing texture. Let's add some color there as well. Look at this area. It's becoming gorgeous this brush masks. I think they are giving a better texture than this side. Again, the more you do this, better you will understand what you like. I think now I like this texture more for this work. Lovely. Can you see I'm just mixing up all the colors that I have in my palette. I hope my palette is visible to you. Sorry, once again. I'm just going to keep it on the side here so that you can see it better. Yeah. I'm just picking up whatever color. Not really thinking much about color theory here, mixing up some colors and I think this corner has become my most favorite because of the brush mark I did. Okay. But the focus is on covering the entire surface. We don't want any white space to be visible much. You see some of the colors are mixing and becoming muddy and I like muddy colors. So that's why I don't really mind it. But if you like vibrant colors, keep it however you like it. There is no rule here. Just just play and just keep adding colors. This is a very soothing exercise, I feel, where you don't have to think anything, just keep adding colors. Maybe some orange. Just want to make it like a whole array of colors. Okay. Maybe just blow. I think the whole paper is covered now. Next, what I'm going to do is just before letting it dry, as you can see, some blobs have already formed, but I'm just going to add a few more drops here and there. Mostly some of the neutral colors, not really very bright colors. So again, this is for no particular reason just because I love doing splatters. I'm just doing that. Okay, I feel it's a bit too much, so I'm just going to, yeah, wipe a little bit off. Look at these brush strokes over here. Looking pretty gorgeous. I think that's it. There are quite a bit of puddles of water over here. We'll be show you up close. You see the waters are starting to flow. I'm just going to let this dry. Really like this over here. Yeah. I think I'm going to leave it at this and let it dry because as long I sit with it, I'll just keep doing something or the other. Watercolor dries little lighter. Once it dries the color is going to change a bit and then we will come to it and see what more we can add to this. But I like it as it is already. It's looking pretty good. I love the texture over here. See wherever there are big textures, I like to give some dark color, then it is more visible. So just adding this indigo color a little bit over here. I think that's good. See, I can't stop. Okay. I'm going to leave it at that. Let this try and we will come back to it. This paper has tried, but before cutting it, I was just thinking just to experiment since it's a A four size, what if I color half of it and see how it changes? I'm thinking I really like the bottom area and from here, I'll get some of the dark ones and some pink on it. I'm going to leave the bottom half as it is. On the top half, I'm just going to add a little bit of color and see how this changes, especially the sky area and little bit over here. The tissue is soaking up the paint and it's going all around. That's a different look that I'm getting here. If you like this, what you can do is just add tissue paper on a plain mixed media paper or whatever paper you're doing and you can use this technique as well. I think this is a really nice one. I like this color. I think dark color is looking good. Just playing with the colors, there is no color theme that I have in mind. Maybe some burn sienna. The colours are reacting in a different way than on a plain paper because of the tissue paper, which is lovely. Okay I just thought I'll just add a little bit of because this white is too much. I'm just adding just a bit of black and raw umber on top of this white. I'm actually loving doing this so much that I continue a little bit down also. Especially on top of the white, the colors are looking really good. Objection. Okay, it's not looking good, as you can see, but I'm sure after we cut it down, it's going to look gorgeous. So I think I quite like this the addition of colour on top of it. And yeah, that's it. 5. Embellishing the papers: Okay. So here are all the pages that we have created so far. Let's have a look at them. Um, so here are the colored pages. And here are the text pages. Just look at them just the same technique, but just by tweaking it little bit how different they can look. This is just the vintage pages stuck together with nothing on top of this. This is the vintage page, but with a raw umber wash on top of it, very slight and it gets a little crumpled. I've been doing this to make it straight, but it doesn't really matter much because we're going to cut it off. Here is one which is just like this except that I have JSO little bit on top of it and then have done the umber wash. You can see that takes a little bit through it, but it's almost hidden. This is a little bit more sturdy now because it has a few layers of papers collaged, then some JSO it has become pretty thick. This is also good enough thickness. This is also good. All of these three are pretty thick and they are not straightening up much, but that's okay. And here are our three colored pages. This is the one we did first, which is basically adding a texture of tissue on top of a painting, um, or it can be any colored pages that you have, um, or any old painting that you don't like, take a print of it, or you can do directly on the painting itself. This is the texture of tissue on top of this and then I've added a little bit of watercolor here and there, just a little bit. Then if you don't have any painting like this, I have shown you how to do it on a plain mixed media paper and just add burst of color here and there, and this is what you get. I have added earlier of tissue on top of it, not everywhere, but in few places I have covered it with brown tissue paper. This one is JOD and added some watercolor on top of it. So here are all the pages. Now we are almost ready to create our paper buttons. But before that, on these two pages, I just want to add a little bit more of embellishment. None of these has any these have tissue texture, this has the JSO texture. But I was just thinking of adding a little bit more of texture. I'll just keep this aside and on these two, I am going to add just a little bit more. And that little bit more is basically here are my distress ink pads. These are the only three colors that I have and a black. And I don't have too many stamps, but I have just a few stamps. This is a foliage. These are butterfly. These are some text stamps. This is, um, this is also a text stamp kind of tags, and this is a vintage stamp. You don't need to have so many stamps. If you have whatever stamps you have, you can just take it out. We're not going to use all of these. I'm only taken out a few of them. And what I'm going to do is just do a little bit stamping, not the whole thing, but just add a few of the text stamps here and there. The color I added is brown. Let me add a little bit of green over here maybe. This is how I do stamping. You see, this looks fabulous, right? Let me bring the camera level down. And whatever is leftover, I can adjust a bit. I want to do some of the butterflies as well. Um the butterfly, maybe this one. Green butterfly. Nice. Oh, there's a texture came up over here, but that's okay. We don't have to do everything perfectly. Just some imperfect marks here and there. Maybe this one. I think the black is looking good, so I'm going to go more with a little bit of black. Okay. Yes, I think I like the black. Um, This is like a stamp. I think I want to try a little bit of this one, and this is the green one. Nice. The green is not that visible. It's kind of subtle. It's there, but it's not much visible, so I like that. And oops. It's better to keep them covered. And, probably this color would be good as well. Yeah, I like this tmp, so I'll go for this one. Nothing. It's very light. I will go with a black. Nice. Really like this. I think I want to add this one just a bit more. And on this one, also, I want to add a few marks. Now, you see, look at this. It looks pretty gorgeous, right? Almost like a colage paper. You can use this as a colage paper, tear it off, and use it. Do I want to add a little bit more of butterfly, maybe? And I'll call this work done. Hm. Nice. Okay. Let's add a few more to this one. I think I will add some foliages on this one. Let's see how this comes. This is the green one. Not that bright. Pretty subtle. This color looks good. Maybe I'll add more of this. Not much visible. Let's move on to black. Um, Hmm. And a few butterflies, maybe. I like this damp quite a bit. Okay. And a little bit fixed. This is this one. Oh, I like this one also with the butterfly. Maybe I'll add this one later. Let me add this first. Nice. And this one with the butterfly. Hmm. Just a little bit of this stamp. This is a vintage stamp. Can you see the subtle marks these inks are making? It's not too much, but it's adding so much. See, look at this. I don't think I want to make it even more than this. I think this is good enough. Just have a look at all of the marks. They are pretty awesome. Like this vibrant pink area. It's not that visible, but they are there. Here are my two final pages, colorful ones. I'm thinking now if I should add just a bit more. These two already have a lot of text visible. This is the one which does not have much text to visible. I feel like I can add just a bit of uh, stamping on top of this and not something very bright like black, but maybe a little bit of these green and brown colors that I have. Let me do a little bit and see how this goes. Mmm. See, very subtle. It looks so vintage, right? And especially the raw umber wash is also making it vintage. These colors are also very vintagy. So I'm going to continue only with this vintage stamp. I love this one because I think it makes anything looks so vintagy. This is the brown color. I think the green is looking fabulous. Mm. Lovely. Oh, I did not expect this to happen. The idea just popped in my mind just now, and I think this color I haven't done. Brushed corduroy, that's the name of this color. This is vintage photo, and it's good to keep them covered. And this green one is forest moss. So I am using this color now, the kind of raw umbo color. And maybe whatever this much. Hmm. Nice. I think this looks really good. I love it. Do I want to add a little bit on this corner? Maybe, yes? Wow. Lovely. This is how the final page looks. I think this is actually better than just the washed page and really the. Let me just put this aside. Let's look at all our three text pages. So feel free to do all three or the one that you like the most. This is the easiest one I feel just collaging. This is collaging with the wash. This is JSO wash and stamping. This has the most amount of work on it, and of course, this looks the best out of all of this, but they also have their own individuality. I won't say this is bad, or this is worse, all of them have their own properties to it. I think once we start cutting them, we will see how they look each of them. These are the text ones and let's look at the colored ones. This is the only one I haven't done anything on top of it because I think already this is pretty chaotic. Don't want to add anything to this. I think this looks good. I haven't done too much on the acrylic paper, just a bit of stamping here and there. On the watercolor one, I think I have done quite a bit, but I really like it, especially these dots over here. I think it looks really good. All right. Now in the next video, we are going to create our paper buttons. 6. Cut Circles: Okay. I hope you are ready with your papers as well. I have all of my six pages here and I am ready to cut them into paper buttons. Now, to cut them into paper buttons, the most handy thing that you would have is this circle cutters. But even if you don't have them, I will show you an alternative. I have only two of the. This is a 1.5 inch circle, the diameter, and this is 1 ". Now I am going to cut we have a lot of circles to cut here and I'm going to do first round with this one and then I will show you the alternative. I am going to start um so this is how you are supposed to cut it. But what I like doing is I put it upside down like this so that I can see exactly what I am cutting into. But sometimes you might want the element of surprise and you don't want to see it. So that's your call. I'm going to do one row of 1.5 inch and just keep them. See, we are going to create a lot of paper buttons, right? I'm just trying out a few from this paper cutter and sorry, the suckle cutter and let's see how they turn out. So this is the 1.5. Will I get one more? Yes, I might just get one more from here. Let's have a look. Look at them. See, the moment you have cut them, just have individuality of its own. Looks like it just looks alive, I feel. The moment you cut it from the paper. It's just so good, it has a dimension of its own. Now I'm going to do it from all the six pages. All right. I have just cut out all the 1.5 inch circles and just have a look at them. They are so good, especially this one. Look at them. Not all of them will be absolutely stunning, but some of them would be absolutely gorgeous. Like this one I love. Look at this one with just a few text and a little bit of butterfly showing. I like this also. This is pretty vintagy effect. Anyways, we are going to do a lot over them. Look at the texture. It looks gorgeous, right? So these are the 1.5 inch circles. Now, how I like my circles to be like this. These are the ones that I've done previously, and here I like to layer them with double circles and I think they just look wonderful this way. For the 1.5 inch circle, I found that the cap of my pink tube is perfect. If I hold it like this, no, this is actually a bit too small. I need something yeah, I think this circle is going to be just perfect for this one. What I like doing is have these as the base and then put them on top. Now for the 1.5 inch circle, here is another cap that I have. Basically, what I'm going to do is just to give you an idea of how you can do this if you don't have a circle punter. What you can do is just put it upside down. This is the one I'm taking the vintage one and just take any cap that you can get your hands on, grab a pencil and all we're going to do is this is exactly the same as this. This is a 1.5 inch circle. All you're going to do is create circles like this. This is how I have done in the past. The circle puncture is something that I've got only very recently. I haven't even used it much. Then you are just going to cut it off. What I like to do is first cut off a little bit from this, then I find it easier to do. Now you go around one by one. Cutting is also very therapeutic um, activity according to me, I love cutting a lot. And when you cut with a circle puncture, it's like a perfect circle. But when you do with your hands, it is imperfect circle and somehow I like these imperfect circles more than my perfect circles. It's just that it's a bit faster. That's all. Look at this. This is not look at all of my old paper buttons. None of them are perfect circles. Can you see that? Be I cut them with my hand. I mark them on the back and then I cut them with my hand. But they look so good. You won't be able to say that it is a perfect circle or not. Like this, I'm just going to cut off all my circles now. The first round is done and I'm not doing it on camera anymore, but I'm just going to cut out this whole sheet with this 1.5 inch circle. Actually, I'm thinking instead of doing all 1.5, maybe I want to do a few small ones. The small ones is basically the size of this small pain tube, so you can also do that. But just for the sake of this video, I am going to do it faster with this one because maybe not all of them, I will use for layering, maybe I will keep them as it is for a few of the buttons. A small button like this is good, right? S. Like I was saying, previously, what I had done is on the text ones, I have added the colored ones, but we can do the other way around also. On the colored one, also we can put the text ones. But I just feel the difference between 1.5 and 1 " is too much. So I need something in between and I don't think I have anything um what about this size? I think this is the one in middle. This size, I hope you're getting it. We have done two sizes as of now. What I feel like we have done 1.5 inch from all the six pages. Likewise, let's create the 1 " circle also from all of this, and then we will see what we can do. Okay. So here are all of my 1 " circles which are ready, cut out from all the six pages. Look at them. Look at this one, the one with a lot of texture. I love this one. And what else do I love from here? Yes, I love this. I think I love all the textured one somehow a lot more. This is the one with a little bit of circle in the corner of my landscape painting. Yeah, here is the circular one circle dots one. I think this also has a lot of individuality of its own. Love this one. Yeah, all of them look good. The pink ones are also so cotous. Just a simple pink. All right. So here are all the 1 " circles. Now, I need to do something in between these two sizes and I don't have any more circle puncture. I'm going to use the cap of this pain tube and I'm going to cut out the circle in between these two. You see, I will just cut out one and show you. Let me start with this one. Okay. I don't know the size of this one, so let me just check. Okay, so that I can call this circle by a name. This is the 1.51. A little bit smaller than 1.51, and this is 1 ". See exact 1 ". And this is exact 1.5. Yes, it is exact. I was looking at the wrong side maybe. This is exact 1.5. This is exact 1 ". And what about this one? This is 1.25. Yeah. Makes sense. 1.25. Why I wanted a size in middle of these two size? Let me just cut a few more of the colored ones also. Maybe I will take from this one. Let me cut a few of the middle size one. Then I will tell you, I will be able to give you a better example of why I need the middle size. Okay. Look at these five. They look gorgeous. All of them, I love them. Okay. So here are my middle size. This many I have. Yeah, I don't want to mix them up so that I can show it to you. All right. Now, why do we need three sizes? Because we will layer them, we can layer them or we can keep them as it is. Maybe some of them I'll keep as it is, and some I will layer. But while layering, This is I think this size, one, two, three, four, four of these I have from this side. Now, if I have the bigger one, I can put the middle size one on top of this and create a button like this. This distance is a bit small. Now, this two can become a button, and then we can mix and match this two. And this can become a button. Can you see that? Or the other way around, we can take a color one. Let's say this one and we can put this on top. This is almost not much visible. Maybe, this looks good. See, maybe a little bit smaller. I would have preferred a little bit smaller, what I can do is just cut it off a little bit more. And if I do that, you know, it's okay. It's not that much space is visible, but then this also can be a combination. And let's take a colored one. Let's say this one, and if we take one from here, these two can create. Do you see the layering combination that is happening if we put one on top of each other? Obviously, we have to decide and see which one we like more. This one, it's not going too much well, with this one, maybe I will take something like a little bit more texti one. See? Look at this. This looks so good. I hope you are getting the idea of how we need three sizes to mix and match all of these to create layers. My only concern is there is not much difference between these two sizes. Do you see that this is the 1.51 and the 1.251 is a bit bigger than I would want it to be. So it's not bad, but I would prefer a little smaller one, but it's okay. Let me not fuss about it. I think whatever we have is good. This is the one that I have used for the middle size. See, I can cut it a little bit more. I think I have cut it a little bit on the outer edge. I can cut it. Next time while cutting this one, I can just make it a bit smaller or even after cutting it, you can just go over it and make it a lit less. Do we see this is better. Now a little bit of the previous layer is visible. This is not a good example, probably this. Do you see how nice this combination is I just dreamed up a little bit from the edge and this is fitting in perfectly. That's all that I'm going to do. Now I am not going to make this video too long. I hope you've got the idea. Of cutting your paper buttons. I'll just put each into each stack. I don't want to mix them yet. What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to cut all my papers into the three stacks as much I want to. The middle stack is probably I need more of middle stack because this will go both on this side and on this side. We need middle size one bit more, which means I have more job to do with my casar. But yes, I'm going to take the time tonight and cut it off camera and I'm going to show you tomorrow how we can put them all together and create beautiful paper button. You also take your time. Cutting is a very therapeutic exercise for me. I'm going to enjoy cutting it off. You also do it, and I'll see you in the next video. Okay, here are my middle ones. I found a solution to cut it of the right size, which is between these two sizes let me show that to you. What I'm doing is earlier what I was doing is I was placing it like this and then I was marking a circle around it. It was coming a little bit bigger than I would have wanted. Also, making the circle around it was getting a bit tedious for me. And if I have to do so many circles, imagine how many times I have to go around it and do the circles. So I found a solution to it, which is basically use any of your inks that you have. And what I've done is just add the ink over it and you place it so you see the circle becomes instantly a bit smaller than the previous circle. Also this is easy to do. You see? Now, all you have to do is cut it off. Marking has become really easy this way and wherever there is, the mark is not there, just go with your pencil and mark it out a little bit. Anyway, we are not trying to do perfect circles if little bit goes here and there, it's okay. That's easy way of marking out your circles and cutting it. Okay, so here I am after two days, it took me actually more time than I thought it would to cut out all the shapes, especially the middle size one because obviously that's the one I had to mark out and cut out on my own. And the reason for that is the papers have become really thick after all the textures and collage and everything, and that is a good thing because then the paper buttons are going to be really strong and study like how buttons are. So this is really strong and that's why it took me a little bit more time to cut out, um than I expected because in my other class macy flour doodles, if you've seen it, there also has a lot of cutting, but that cutting was not so tedious or rather so time consuming because it was just a thin sketchbook page, sketchbook paper of whatever, below 200 GSM. But this mixed media paper is already 250 GSM plus with all the textures on top of it, it has become pretty thick almost close to 300 or 350 GSM. And that's why it took some time to cut them. So here are not the paper buttons. Here are the circles, and we're going to look at it, but I just wanted to before so these are the three bowls. I've kept them in three separate bowls just to have the size, different sizes stacked up together. I just wanted to show you this one, you know, all the leftovers. So these are some of the good ones rest I have thrown and they seemed so good. I could not throw them out and I was thinking what to do with them and then my husband suggested that they are going to be such a good mask for, you know, jelly printing. So you can place them in whichever direction you want. If you like doing jelly printing, you can use them and, you know, use your creativity to use them as mask and create really nice prints on jelly prints. So I just thought I will quickly tell you that as well and give you some ideas. I'm just going to keep it out. I haven't cut all the papers, as you can see, I'm still left with just a few of this a little bit leftover because I was not sure of the sizes I would need. And that's why I thought I will first create the buttons from whatever I have already and then I'll see what size I need to cut and not, cut it. Already, I have so many. Again, I'm going to leave it aside. Now let's look at the three sizes of the circles we've got. Okay. Now I want you to take some time to have a look at them. Each of them is like a artwork in itself, right? So this is the bigger one. I am going to keep them down and let's have a look together at each of these. The paper ones, the collage ones are probably not that different. All of them are pretty similar. But these colored ones, some of them are really interesting, right? Look at this. There are a few good ones which I love absolutely like this one, the textured ones, the one with butterfly. Don't you think they look like a piece of art in itself, this one. It's totally up to your interpretation what you want to see in them. This is the bigger one. Then let's look at the middle size one. I really love this one with the umber wash after the gesso and a little bit of stamping probably we did. Really nice. Look at this one. It's like, so beautiful, right? And in this lesson, we're going to make them even more beautiful. But before that, I really want you to take a moment and look at your circle cutouts and see how beautiful they are. Let's not just move on too fast. Let's just stay with this because they are going to be changed very soon and we won't have them for a long time to cherish. This is not really my choice of color combination, but yeah, some people might like it, but it's not really my favorite. Okay, so this is the middle size. Now let's look at the small ones. I think they are so cute, the smaller ones. And these are really thick. These paper buttons are really thick, which is a very, very good thing. I think, wow. I love this one. There are quite a few that I like in this one. This, for sure, I like a lot. Yes, this one also. So let's look at some of the colors that I like. I want you to do the same as well. Just look at your stash of circle cutouts and see the ones that you like, cherish them for some time. Wow. I love this one and even this one. I like this. Here is that flower flowers from that landscape painting that I cut out. That landscape, by the way, I forgot to mention that is a photo of Croatia that a friend of mine had shared with me, which I had painted. So yeah, this is the flowers of that lake in Croatia. I forgot the name of that lake, but yeah, that's a pretty famous lake over there. So that's all. I really like this one as well. So here are a few of the small buttons that I like. I don't know why I'm calling them buttons, but yeah, the small circles circle cutouts that I really like. All right, now that we have had a good look at all of them, and now comes the next step, which is basically I would call it inking the edge, or you can see adding some depth to the paper button. The reason I like doing this tap is because once we have cut them, you look at the edge, it's all white because we worked on white pages. Everything is white. And when we add the inking around the edge, what happens is basically you add a little depth to it. It's almost like, you know, how we add a frame around a painting that just highlights the painting even more. It makes the painting looks even better just because of the frame and it adds depth. Uh, to the painting. Your whole focus goes on the painting just because of the frame. If there is no frame, you just look outside a lot. The same thing, we are going to treat each of these paper circles as a piece of art and we are going to ink around the edge to give it a depth and bring all the focus onto this small piece of thing. 7. Inking the edges: All right. Now we are going to add the inking to the circles. All I'm going to use is this distress ink. It's called vintage photo. This is the one I love. It has burned tumber or raw amber in color, and I really like this one. But it's your choice. You can do black as well or any other color that you like. All we are going to do is move it around each of these circles. It's going to be time consuming when you do this, but I'm just going to show you a few of this so that you see how beautiful it transformed. Let's take a colorful one. Let's say this is the one. What I would do is just go around it once and then go one more time with a little bit touching up on the front so that the front also gets a good look of this ink. You see how instantly it just transforms. Let me do one more. Let's say this one. Right now, the edge is all white. Now first, what I do is just go on the side when you do the side, you see it's not really much visible from the top. This is another step that I like to do is just go over it a little bit towards the front. Until now I was holding my ink pad like this. Now I'm going a little bit on the top, just a little, not too much. I'm going to ink it like this. Let's do one from the big pile. And. Can you see the depth of it? The moment I added the ink, it's instantly changed almost like an artwork of its own. I really love this one with just half the butterfly. Now I'm going to mix up the pile while I'm finishing with this one because it doesn't make sense to keep them in separate sizes anymore. So yeah. So let me just show you a few more. Oh, yes. Now, I know some of you might be thinking, if I don't have this inpad, how can I do this? I'm going to show you alternative as well because when I did it first time, I did not have this ipad. Like I said earlier, this is something I bought only very recently. I did not have all of these ink pads. Now, if you don't have one, how you can do is, um, this is my butter paper which I use as a palette. And I'm going to take out a little bit of the raw umber column. You can use burn umber also I have used burn dumber in the past and use a sponge, whatever you have, and dip your sponge in the paint and then just go around it. See in just one stroke, you will get the colors a little bit on the front as well because the sponge works a little different and there you go. Let's do a few more maybe the pink one. Okay. So just a bit of bent. Both these techniques does not have any difference to it, any difference at all. This is the one I did earlier with distress ink, and this is the one with them but the colors also look same and both of them has equal impact. It really doesn't make any difference. I'm going to keep it here on the butter paper for the time being until it dries completely so that it doesn't spoil mine. I actually, I think I like this because this is happening faster. I don't know. I just feel that. Okay. Let me do a little bit with the ink and see which technique I like more. What is happening, I'll tell you the exact difference. Here, the ink is coming out really less. Because this sponge, whatever pad they have created it with it's hard. Was this sponge is more softer, so I'm able to go around it a little faster. But honestly, it's really your choice. I'm just showing you all the differences. And yeah, totally your choice, how you're gonna do it. So now you can watch me do some more of the easy part. A and with that, I finished inking all of my circle cutouts. It took me almost an hour, but it's an hour of meditation for me. It's doing the same thing over and over again, repeating the same process. It's without thinking anything, it's absolutely a Zane process for me. So you have also if I've never done something like this, doing the same thing over and over again, try it and see it's so much fun and it puts you in such a meditative zone. Look at our paper cutouts now. They look gorgeous according to me, with this border around them. And I can just keep staring at them and just feel good about just looking at them. One quick thing I want to tell you. If there is anything that you don't like, any color, for example, this one, I like this one, but say for example, you don't like anything, you can just apply a little bit of ink over it just to add a little touch up to it, like I've done on this one. Not on every bit of them, but wherever you feel like adding, you can just add a little bit of this ink on top, just to highlight the texture and just add a little bit more accent to it. So I hope you had fun in this process of inking and in the next video, we are going to start putting two together and start building our buttons. 8. Mix & Match: Now I have inked all my circles and in this tape, we are going to put two together and create our lead buttons. I think this is the most exciting step for me because it's mixing and matching and you have a huge platter of circles and you get to put two together and use your creativity in how you like two colors together. Um you know, just like this. I like the words on the back and then the color on the front, but see what you like. I want to do something the other way around. Let's say, for example, this one in the bottom and this one on the top. We have three sizes, so we will lay the middle on the large and the small on the middle, right? So this is a very interesting process. Continue doing this. I'm going to take my time, take your time for in this process, there is no rush. Just enjoy the process, see what you like, how you want to do together. Now, if there is something that you like a lot and you don't want to layer, you can keep them separate as well. Let's say, for example, this one, I like a lot. I can keep it separate just like this. We can create a button with a single layer also. But I really leave it up to you how you want to layer your designs. It's totally your creativity, spend some time with this. I'm just going to spend my next half an hour or so doing this. All you need for this tape is glue, whatever glue you have, something with a tip is probably better. I don't want to glue immediately, but just to show you what you are going to do is say, for example, this one, I'm pretty much sure that I'm going to keep it like this. All you do is add a little glue to this. I don't add the glue all the way to the edges, but this much is fine as long it will keep it together. That I'm going to do a little later. First, I want to just layer all my pieces and see how they look, and then I'm going to start gluing them together. This is my I think this is the one which is already glued, so I am going to see, this is the large and the small together. I don't think it looks really good. But if you like it, please do it. It's totally your creativity at this sp. Just enjoy the process and just do it the way you like. I just spent the 30 minutes and organize this set of buttons. Did you notice that I did some with three layers? It's just that I had quite a few small leftover, and then I decided, why not try doing a three layer button. This is a three layered button and I did quite a few. I think, here is one, layering the colors and seeing how they look together. Here is one, here is one. I don't think I like this one a lot. Then I am left with a lot of small circles. Which means I need to cut out a little more of the middle circles. I had no idea that I would have so many small circles. Now I'm going to keep these aside, there are quite a few small circles left. And once I cut out the middle sources, I will be able to do this. But I think this is good enough for us right now to continue with the project next I'm going to start gluing them together. A Okay. So here are all the paper buttons that I have glued together so far. It took me a couple of hours to do this. The glue is not entirely dry. I feel it's a bit wet, um, so I'm going to let this dry now. So these are all the ones that I have done at the moment. I have a few smaller circles left and for which I don't have the middle size, so I'm going to do that a little later. But these are all and apart from this, I have kept a few bigger circle and a few smaller circles. The ones that I liked and I want to make them a paper button just on its own without layering. This is something that I want to try. I have not done this before. Can you see I have done only a few of three layers like this. I don't even know how it will look. Not this one. I think I did six of them. Here one. And here is one. I think they look good, but I don't know how it will look after I make the holes in them. I haven't done a lot of this. So in the next lesson, we are going to convert them into real looking buttons. One more thing that I wanted to tell you is that, after sticking two together, they are so study and hard just like a cardboard, which is how stiff the paper buttons are not paper buttons. A buttons are the ones on the wooden ones or the cardboard ones. These are not as thick, but they are very, um, very strong together, it does not feel like paper to me at all. Yeah, the single ones, they are a little bit softer, obviously, because they are not double layered or triple layer. But I think these are good for the time being. I hope you understood and you have got also your layer buttons as of now. In the next video, we are going to transform them into beautiful looking buttons. 9. Holes & Stitching: Okay. Now in this tape, we are going to take each of these paper buttons and create the holes in them just like this. I have done for just a few of them so that you understand how we are going to get here. Okay, so I'm going to show you a few of them and then it's very easy you will be able to do it on your own. All you need for this step is a black marker and all. A is basically a needle tip with a handle in the back. I'm also going to use a towel on my side to make the holes because if you do it on your table or wherever you're working on, you might put a dent in your table. So you don't want to do it directly on the table and also you can push better if you use a towel keep a towel handy. All right. So let's start with this. Do you have an option of doing two buttons, sorry, two holes or four holes. For the small ones, I like to do two holes like this. Then you're going to place it on the towel and just So it should go in pretty easily. It's not that difficult to do this. And you make the hole a little bit bigger. That's it. And that is your I'm just marking it out with a little bit of black on the edge. If you do the black mark a little bit bigger, then this problem is solved. So I'm going to do it a little bigger in this one. So here are my two black marks, and then I'm going to Put my all in the markings and you just get a hole. Now I am going to do it for all the paper buttons that I have on my table. Oh, and let me show you a 41 also. It's very easy as you can really understand. So you just make four of this. And we make four. You see how nicely it is done. Okay, so I have done quite a few with you, as you can see. You can look through the holes. It's just like any other button that you would get to buy in the market. It's just that it's a beautiful creation of your own. I just love it, how they look. I am going to finish making the holes for all of these, the rest of the pieces. Um, and then I'm going to do one more optional thing, which is basically putting the threads through this. Let me just finish all of this and then we're going to look at. Well, here are my paper buttons. They are almost ready. I say almost because they are already buttons with the holes in it, but I like to do one additional step after this, and that is totally optional if you want to you can or you can leave it as it is. I just like to put a little thread through my holes and create this finished button. The reason for that is if I want to use it as a embellishment in future, I can just add glue to this and add it as a paper button. If I actually want to use it like a button like sew it with something, then I can again, put my needle and thread through these holes and attach it just like you would do to any other button. So instead of keeping them as it is, I like to add the thread in it. I have added a few. Let me just show you. I generally like to use black and white in this and not any other color or maybe sometimes brown, but it's totally your choice. If you want to make them even more colorful, you can use a contrasting color that you like for this step. If you don't want to add anything, you are done. You project is finished, you can leave it as it is. But if you want to add this additional bid, I will just show you what I do. First is, I'm going to show you with a black thread. So just make a knot at the end. I'm using embroidery floss, very basic, um, six fly thread and a needle. Let me choose which one I want to show you. Um let's say this one. You put your needle through one of the holes. If it is a four hole, then it's easier, I feel. Um, you pull it out and then you put it through this and you go back. It's like a slow stching method. Take your time to stage all of your buttons. Yeah. If it is a four hole, then it's easy because you can go through this line over here and make a knot to end your stage. Right? That's it. It's done. Now let me show you a two hole one. If it is a two hole, then you don't have that line at the back and my way out of that is so you go like this, you go out from here, and you see there is nothing for you to tie it on the back. What I do for this is just go through the hole once again. Go out on the other side. I noticed after doing the threaded part, I really like the four whole ones. I would probably make more of four whole ones rather than two whole. The whole one also is nice, it's not bad. But this makes me look more like a button, and this is more like a design for me. So I'm going to cut this off. I hope you understood how this is done and here I have my white thread and needle as well, same embroidery floss. To start with, I'll make a note at the end. And let me do this one. Okay Like this, I'm going to finish off doing the stitches for all of my buttons. Now I'm almost towards the end of the process. You can see the pile on my right, which is done and I'm just left with a few more and I switch to the brown thread and I somehow feel the brown is a more neutral color than black and white and brown looks good on all the colors. I ended up doing more with brown than with black and white. Also, I wanted to tell you something at this point after doing almost close to 200 paper buttons teaching that don't try to do this at one shot, and I realize that if I'm chatting with someone or talking to a friend and then doing it, doing this stetching it's so much more better than just doing it, you know, because it kind of get a little tiring if you're doing just the steaching. But while watching a movie, while listening to it. So do something while you're doing it and it can be such a relaxing process. Honestly, this is my experience, and I'm just sharing it with you. While doing the inking and while doing the creating the holes or anything else that I did before in this process. All of those things I could do just, you know, it was totally a calm meditative process. But the stetching part, I felt that just doing it on its own is a bit tiring or rather tedious. But if I'm chatting with someone and doing it, it is, oh, my God, I just finished it, like in no time. Because when you are talking to your friends, I was chatting with my husband and I was doing this and it just I just fin it was a very, very, um, very good exercise for me to stitch while chatting. So I just thought I'll share my experience with you so that, you know, you also try it out and look at find it on your own, what process you like, how do you like doing this? But this is really a slow stetching method, which I absolutely enjoy doing. And yeah, I hope you are also enjoying so far if you're doing the stitching along with me. So continue doing it until you finish your whole pile. It's going to be such a exciting thing to look at once we finish doing it. And with that, I finished creating all my paper buttons and look at them. It looks amazing. I mean, just by finishing it, it just feels so good to look at them that I created them. It's it's a very nice feeling to, you know, finish a project and create something beautiful at the end of it. So let me look at these and see the ones that I really like. I think I like all of them, but if I have to specially choose a few, I like muted colors. So these kind of things, which is, uh, plain, vintage you feel, those are the things that I like a lot. I like some of these colorful ones also, which is not too colorful. But sometimes depending on the project that you're doing sometime you may want to use something colorful like this. That is why it's good to have a huge stash of paper buttons with a different color combination. I think I love this one also quite a bit. Now you have your collection of paper buttons. If you have followed along and done with me, you can see the threads are in three colors. And if you are wondering where to use it, let me show you something that I quickly have at hand. Here is a journal for which I have added this. Here I have stitched it so that I can put this black fabric around it. But not necessarily that you have to stitch it all the time. You can keep it without stitched as well, gluing it also on your project. Here is another journal that I have right on my hand. For this one, I was thinking, I will take a piece of fabric to do a cover and then you can add this button on top of it, glue it with the fabric and then tie it across. That can be a nice one and then what do I have at hand right now? I have a envelop here. You can use this as closure for envelop also. These are the few things I could think of right on top of my head. And let me see what I can find. Yes. I have a few tags here. So for the tags like this botanical fuzzy cut is a focal point. Instead of that, you can use the paper buttons as a focal point also on your tags or, you know, whatever, note card or anything if you are doing like that. So that's all for this class, I hope you enjoyed and created some lovely paper buttons. Each of the phases of this class is very meditative. Take time. This project is not to rush to the finished product, even though the finished pieces are beautiful to look at. But it's all about the process that you are going through while working through each of the phases, starting with collage, then coloring, cutting, inking, gluing, stitching, everything. All of the stages are something uh, to pause and enjoy and, you know, um, doing it with a lot of intention and not rushing through because I know I have a tendency to rush through a process always. But this time, I really enjoyed everything I was doing and I really hope that you did too. Let me know how was your experience, um, and I would love to know that. And also, I would love to see what you created after, you know, following this class. I'm sure all of us will have different buttons, different colors, depending on the color scheme that you choose, all of us will have different paper buttons. Thank you so much for joining me in this class and have a creative week ahead.