I’ve shared here before about collecting driftwood at the beach to make things, like the floating driftwood temples.  Well, the driftwood love continues my friends. One day at the beach B found a piece of driftwood that looked like it was meant to be a toggle button. He gave it to me and asked if I would make him a button out of it. That sparked an idea. The next time our family went to the beach, I looked for small pieces of driftwood. And the time after that. (I collected larger pieces as well, for some other projects.) When I came home, I spread them out in the sunshine to further dry them out.

I had so much fun sorting through the driftwood, drilling the holes, and tying them on cards. I hoped other people would love them as much as I did. I was so delighted when they were popular at the last fiber festival we went to, and it made me excited to make more! I will be bringing driftwood buttons along this weekend to the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival, and I posted some in the shop as well. Speaking of that, we have a new online shop! I’ve been looking forward to sharing that with you. It’s been a dream for so long, and now it feels awesome to be making it a reality.

Another thing I’m excited about? Our small button cards. I wrote about them over on Instagram. Jeff had been wanting to make small button cards for a long time, and awhile ago we finally did it. We’re on our third tweak of the design (not pictured), but we love them. The size is so great, and I think they’re really cute. They also had a very warm welcome at our last fiber festival, and we’ve been working on display ideas. It’s kind of funny how excited Jeff and I have been about them, actually.

I appreciate the small cards for online too because it gives me more flexibility when I’m offering buttons there. Posting single buttons in the shop would not pay for the time it took (unless it’s a specialty button that costs more), but if I have a set of matching buttons I can now tie them on single cards and make one listing where customers can choose how many they want. It’s such a great option when people are searching for specific amounts of buttons for their projects and may not want to purchase an entire set of eight, for example. I plan to offer a lot more listings that way in the future.

Okay, I think those are all the updates for today. Now I have a lot of packing to do for this weekend!

P.S. I’m not the only one who has been having fun with driftwood around here. Jeff found a piece of driftwood that was especially heavy and wondered what kind of wood it was. He brought it home, sliced it, and after lots of sanding and polishing- these are the results. Aren’t these buttons amazing? The hue is as dark as ebony. The set above is posted in the shop, and he’s been making more buttons with the rest of that piece of driftwood. He loved the wood so much, he wished he had more!