New year and all sorts of buttons

Happy New Year 2013....We have started this year with a new collection of vintage buttons. Over the last few years we at Jewels & Finery UK have amassed a huge amount of vintage buttons that are in all ages, shapes, amounts, sizes and materials. Some for collecting and some for using to embellish many garments to give a vintage style and look along with your vintage jewellery.

From metallic style vintage heraldic buttons that are quite large.

Just a few red buttons in plastic. Great to sew onto a top or jacket.

These are just a few examples, with many more to be added shortly.

Beautiful buttons and beads

We have a second website - Jewels and Finery Craft that is slowly being stocked. It has vintage buttons and beads, as well as other vintage and second hand craft material.

Here are some of the unusual buttons and beads available in single or small amounts.

  Vintage police buttons. Officer or the superintendents would wear these. Old style with a pin. This allowed the buttons to be removed for washing the garment or if promoted there was not need to give the man another jacket (waste not, want not of old)!

1960s vintage beads in plastic. Bright pink and white in mixed sizes and shapes.Love plastic beads as the 1970s Hong Kong beads are gorgeous as well as many of the unusual shapes and colours that are not available today. Our beads come from damaged jewellery or craft beads that someone no longer has use for, they are cleaned and packed for use straight away.

We have called these lumpy vintage beads. They are made of glass with a lumpy surface. There is probably a technical term for this technique!

Vintage buttons made in England still on the original card. They are quite thin and slightly irregular in shape.
This card has buttons of caramel or toffee colours. Made of an early plastic, which we have not tested.There are a few of these cards available in different colours.

Now here is our gallery of beads for Monday...

We will be adding more over the whole Jewels and Finery Craft website this week.

Sarah Coventry Jewellery Brochure 1976 Part 6

Whoops been a while since I wrote a sequel to the 1976 Spring brochure. So here is part 6 and I must try harder to keep up with blog posts now!!
Page 22

A = Heirloom pendant 25"
B = Old Vienna pin/pendant 24"
C = Old Vienna ring.

Page 23

A = Outer space pendant 20 - 22" adjustable.
B = Four dimension necklace/bracelet 33" in gold tone.
B = Above available in silver tone but not shown.

Page 24

Page shows the Black Charmer necklace or pin 30"
Black charmer earrings in clip only.
Versatile jewellery as the brooch can be attached and worn with or without the dropper.
The necklace can be converted into a choker style.


Page 25

A = Ultra versatile earrings
B = Ultra versatile necklace 24"
C = Mystic Lady necklace 31"
The headline says that 24 different styles can be achieved with this versatile ensemble. Detachable droppers and coloured pieces to interchange.

New vintage jewellery and second hand jewellery have been added this week and so much more to come.

Fuchsia vintage brooch by Exquisite July birthday

Silver and emerald ring - second hand jewellery

In Jewels and Finery Craft we have added a few more vintage buttons this week.

Craft Show NEC November 2010

I love going to the different shows at the National Exhibition Centre, just by Birmingham's airport.

Clear rhinestone 6 mm

So last week, my daughter and I took our selves off to the Craft fair which also had Christmas craft gifts and Art supplies included. It was an ideal opportunity to visit many craft stalls and see lots of different things that can be made.

 Panda sew on patch to list shortly

My daughter likes paper crafts and art, so she was in her element buying things to use for Christmas cards and for her scrap booking. Although there were less knitting, beading and sewing stalls. I still found plenty to see and buy!!.

 Vintage buckles

Came back with lots of ideas that I want to try out but now need to find some time.....

At long last Google shopping has stopped blocking Jewels and finery Craft and our items are now appearing in the directory (some even on first page)
Have a good week.......   

Tidying Up Today

Finally got round to tidying up my corner by our bed. As an avid reader, within a short time my corner gets cluttered with piles of books and magazines.
But the real reason was to unearth my sewing box. When work was completed on our central heating in May, everything was hastily cleared out of the way and my sewing box was used as a side table instead of my actual side table that ended up where my sewing box should have been!

Just sorting through my old vintage sewing box (which must be from the fifties), I thought that with so many interesting vintage sewing equipment, I have acquired through the years I must show soon in this blog. So made a note to myself for future blogging and to get some photographs.

Found a book that I brought at a book sale earlier this year "Rose Buckner's book of HOMEMAKING"

Written in the fifties for women especially new brides, the complete instruction on how to create the perfect home, a happy husband and contented children. Love this book it takes you back to an era - before women went out to work and they had children and stayed at home, cooking, cleaning and darning socks!
In the sewing and Knitting hints were the following ideas:

• Buttons will stay on longer if you rub your thread with beeswax before sewing
• If you desire a decorative button for a blouse, belt or hat. Choose a large coloured button, then crochet around the button with coloured silks. to the required depth. 
• Wooden buttons can be bought and painted to match any dress colour scheme

Large swirl buttons

And how about this for "Carrot sandwich spread"
Take equal quantities of mashed cooked carrots and mashed cooked apples and mix with a little marmalade.
Mmmmmmmm let you know!

 

Vintage button packs

We have been buttoning it this week!!

Mark and I have been adding lots of packs of vintage buttons. All colours and styles in single quantities or larger amounts

The March issue of Button Lines arrived last week - The journal of the British Button Society. Full of interesting articles: cut steel and Suffragette buttons for collecting. If you collect or have an interest in buttons the society is well worth joining

Now have a growing mixture of antique and vintage buttons for sewing, embellishment, jewellery making, soft furnishing, craft projects and also some for collecting

Mustard Brown Buttons

White Feature Buttons

vintage buttons, buying, cleaning & sorting

When we first looked at the viability of our website. We decided to sell vintage jewellery as well as vintage buttons under our superb and exclusive vintage accessories collection.

In the first instance the small number of vintage buttons we listed sold well, especially the metal buttons and children's buttons. So in the last few months, during our buying, we sourced more second-hand buttons including several large tins and many smaller quantities.

In the last few weeks, with the growing numbers of buttons, I decided to sort and get ready for sale.
No machinery available, it has all been by hand. So most nights whilst watching TV outcome the tins, etc and I have sorted by hand. My hubby and daughter have helped of sorts also.
Each tin sorted gives you an insight into the person who first made up the tin. It could be a family tin with someone who did a lot of sewing or knitting for children. Or a tin with a family that were wearing overalls and shirts - full of functional buttons. The one tin that I found fascinating was the family that were wearing military uniforms.

It was once the norm to collect buttons. Every family had a tin. In the early twentieth century, all buttons were cut off for reuse before the children took the rags to the rag man in exchange for a goldfish. Spare buttons that were sewn onto the label, went into the tin. Any buttons for recycling also went into the tin. Grandma's button tins were common. But not so today

But have you noticed that the spare button is no longer on the label or on the washing instruction label anymore of most new clothes? So if you lose a button nowadays, there is no spare!!

Anyway, I digress, what I find also fascinating is the other items in these tins. Nails, screws, pins, safety pins, bits of unidentifiable metal, coins, chalk, beads, bits of broken jewellery, etc

Soon the coffee table, the sorting starts per tin. Buttons into colours and other useful bits into piles.
Then each pile of coloured buttons are cleaned. Then each colour is then sorted into size and matched. Matching buttons are bagged ready for photographing and listing on Jewels and Finery. Bit of an art this. As the unmatched buttons are compared with the growing bags of buttons already, sorted & washed also.

With the number of buttons that I have brought, I now find that I am able to match more buttons up. They have come from different sources and singular are not so easy to use but with 2, 3 or more are now of greater use.

The sorting, cleaning and matching are time-consuming, but with a glass of wine and the television on, it is quite therapeutic. Anyway, I am so slow at anything these days. The sorting is quite an achievement. We now have over 100 button bags ready for sale, and soon there will be many more.

Most of the buttons were intended for reuse in sewing, jewellery making and haberdashery projects and recycled to go on clothing. I have always been before anyone else. When it was not fashionable to grow your own, I did. When recycling was not fashionable I did. So this to me is a natural progression. More people will catch up with my way of thinking in the next year or so. So to me, it is common sense to start collecting and buying a large number of buttons now.
However, I have found many beautiful buttons, metal, plastic, rubber and nice sparkling ones. I am not an expert on collectable buttons but I think that I have some and the number is growing. So I have been learning and reading. Will join the UK button society for more information. I personally do not think you can be enthusiastic about the products that you sell if you are not interested and do not learn as much as possible.

Anyway now have to get the bags of buttons photographed. Then listed on the website

Next week the vintage beads need sorting...