When my daughter got married this past July she said she wanted “buttons” to be something I decorated with…so as I began my search to figure out what creative stuff I could do with buttons, this is one of the things I came up with in my search. I saw it somewhere online done in all yellows….so I changed mine up a bit. I liked the idea of doing multiple colors.
I wanted to use all antique old rusty chipped and cracking salt and pepper shakers, but I wasn’t willing to spend a bundle. Plus as it turned out I wanted them to be bigger than salt shakers, so I settle on two antique salt/pepper shakers that didn’t have matches so they were cheap, and one parmesan cheese shaker that I got at the restaurant supply, and painted the top red. I LOVE red.

I also bought these at the restaurant supply too, and painted the lids, and was going to scuff them up a bit...but as it ends up I didn't like them that much so I didn't use them.
I even bought a bunch of sunflower seeds to put in one, but didn’t like that either. So I just stuck with the antique salt and pepper shakers and the one parmesan cheese shaker.

I sat out on my back porch one beautiful afternoon and slid buttons onto wires and twisted the day away...

Honestly, I almost liked them better "before" twisting the wires, but the buttons slide down without the twist to hold it up.
It was a LOT of work!!!! Originally I had thought that I would use these for the centerpieces for all the tables….after doing three I thought again! NO WAY….plus the old buttons were very expensive…..I never knew buttons were such a commodity, but they are very popular! Since they take three different sizes for each flower I ended up buying some colorful ones at Michaels….good enough for me. I think they look great. I simply added old buttons with the new ones and it was more cost-effective.
I also bought a paper puncher from Michael’s to punch the back of the flowers out of news paper, because Kadie also loved the whole “newspaper” look…she even purchased a 100 yr old newspaper off of E-bay to use for the cake borders. Another post to come.

I put them next to some real roses and some other antique stuff where people dropped their cards off in an empty bird-cage.
I think they looked really good next with the birds nests and bed springs and the antique table runner. They were perfect for our vintage barn wedding….
PS: I will never make these again!