Make your own brooch challenge

Kasmira from the super wonderful blog, What I Wore Today is issuing a recession inspired challenge each month. This January it was to make your own brooch. I often wear pins (as I grew up calling them) so I decided to take up the challenge. It's the end of the month, so I'm getting this in just under the wire, lol!

I actually came up with a few different brooches. Every single one is uber easy & cheap, totally in keeping with the ideal behind the challenge. The first type is totally homemade -- I call it the "button brooch".

The basic materials for creating a simple button brooch are:

buttons, 4 or 5 sew-threw and 1 shaft type
a thin, flat wooden disc (available at craft stores)
a pin back (also available from craft stores)

also needed but not shown:

paint or permanent marker to color the disc background
regular glue to fasten the buttons to the disc

optional stuff: rhinestones, beads or other baubles

Once you see the finished product it becomes pretty obvious how simply this was created. I think the fun in this is how imaginative you could get for relatively little money -- there are soooo many really cool buttons & beads out there that the possibilities are endless.



So, here is a picture of all the button brooches I made, each one is very different (you can tell the one on the left is made of the materials shown)

I also had a single button that was interesting looking...I turned it into a small pin that will be perfect for closing open front cardigans so that they look like they actually have a button.

The next brooch I created by taking a piece of broken jewelry and simply gluing a pin back to it. Some of my readers may remember my Etsy destash loot -- well, I used a piece of a broken bracelet to create this next brooch in less time then it takes to pin it to a sweater, lol:

Here's the broken bracelet piece:

The pin back glued on...

...and the final brooch!



Finally I have 2 pins I made from pendants. This was just as simple as could be -- glue a pin back onto a pendant and you have the option of wearing it as a necklace or a brooch.








Of course there are endless ideas one could come up with ranging from delicate artistry to basic arts & crafts 101 and everywhere in between. The ones I've made here certainly fall in the latter category, lol, but that's what I like about them -- they were quick, easy & inexpensive yet creative and fun, too. Plus I really do like how they look!

Thanks for the VERY inspiring challenge Kasmira!