Uses For Random Buttons

It's the rare day that I have to buy buttons. My mother came from a family that followed the tradition of saving the old buttons from your clothes when the clothes were worn out and went in the ragbag. She got further infusions of buttons when older people she knew passed their button collections on to her. She has button boxes, I have button boxes...there are a lot of buttons around.

Of course the small problem with saving buttons is that sooner or later you wind up with a lot of buttons where you only have one or two of a kind. Hate to throw them out, but what do you do with them?

Some of my mother's random mother-of-pearl buttons have gone onto ornamental pillows, which it seems a lot of people have done. 

Some of them end up in other crafts - I have a hair clip my sister made years ago that has the same kind of overlapping look as this picture frame.

Knitting projects that take only a couple buttons, like slippers or hats, are another notion, and a good one if what you have is larger, ornamental buttons - the kind that used to come off coats. I've done that a few times.

But I learned of another, apparently trendy, use a few weeks ago, which is the reason I've been picking through my collection for lone buttons in specific colours today. Brides are making (or buying) button bouquets! One of the knitters I know has requested buttons for her wedding bouquet, and I had to go search online to see what she was talking about. 

Kind of a neat idea, (and appropriate for someone crafty)! Buttons either stacked or wired into flower shapes, or sewn in a dome shape, and set up as a bouquet. What'll they think of next?