First of all, welcome to all of our new readers who are joining us because you read my guest blog post on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer’s blog, Balzer Designs. I shared a technique using polymer clay, alcohol ink, and her stencils to make some pendants and had so much fun experimenting with it. In case you have not seen that post, you can read it here. Thank you Julie for letting me share with your readers! Here’s a sneak peak.

I picked up this cute jacket at a Yard sale for fifty cents for my granddaughter, My Princess, who is outgrowing all of her clothes.

The fabric was in good condition, however, the embellishments were looking a little sad. I decided it needed a creative transformation.

My first step was removing the ribbon and the sequins that had not fallen off yet. The ones that were already missing had left a mark on the fabric. I also took out the decorative stitching. I machine stitched a new ribbon (from my stash) and hand embroidered my own swirling lines across the ribbon. I used polymer clay to make my own custom buttons for the button holes as well as replacements for the sequins. The process I used for making the button design was to make a cane the width needed to fit the buttonhole and then reduced the cane to a smaller size for the tiny buttons.

They are not perfectly matching, but then if I wanted buttons that looked perfectly manufactured, I would have bought some at the store! I like the handmade look.My Princess was so excited to put the jacket on. It is still slightly big on her, but that means she can wear it a little longer.

I still needed to shorten the sleeves for her, but that did not stop her from wearing it to pick vegetables from the garden. She loves cherry tomatoes!

With the clay that was left over I made an assortment of beads and put together a necklace and bracelet for My Princess to wear. She was thrilled!

Custom making buttons was so much fun! I may start pulling buttons off all kinds of clothing and make new ones just to give some old clothes of mine a new look!