Vintage buttons!

My Red Cross buttons arrived, and they're everything I hoped they would be - significantly older than I thought, too, not bakelite (they didn't develop that particular smell in contact with hot water) but definitely some other early type of hard plastic or resin, which means that they're even prettier than I expected, but will be more fragile. No matter, though; I've decided to make the corset double-breasted, and I will use eight out of the nine buttons for that, so they will not end up on garments that are machine-washed anyway.



Lovely, aren't they? They're even pretty on the other side, too - I'm kicking myself a little for not getting a photo of that, too, but I'll do it some other day.

Speaking of buttons, I hit upon the rather obvious idea of making my own pewter buttons the other day - can't think why that hasn't occurred to me before. I used to make tin soldiers with my brother when I was a kid (well, actually I think it was more those little fantasy figures than soldiers, but that's beside the point), it's very easy to do, and as far as I remember it doesn't take a lot of expensive equipment and materials, either.
I can sculpt reasonably well, too, and I'm at my best working with tiny little things like that, so I don't think making my own molds would present that much of a problem. Just imagine, I could make my own NSK-inspired buttons, or whatever I want! I could take the subversive uniform thing a lot further.