Making Pinbacks from Old Postage Stamps

Here's a little behind-the-scenes fun for you. I won't call it a tutorial, because the equipment needed to do this is prohibitively expensive; a very generous family member purchased this for me and I'm still in the clouds over it.

Making pinback buttons is the bestest funnest thing EVER! I have this little glassine envelope of old stamps from Yugoslavia. Most are the perfect size to fit on a 1.25" pinback button. In my opinion, it's much more fun to display them then to keep 'em in an envelope in a drawer somewhere.

First, I decided to mount them on paper so the shiny part of the button didn't show through. To be as authentic as possible, I used super vintage yellow graph paper.

One of the things that makes pinback equipment so costly is this amazing circle cutter tool. Like everything else, it is SOLID STATE and adjustable so you can make these perfect circle cuts.

So next, you need all of the button parts: the back, the smooth front part, and a clear mylar cover. It's time to make a button sandwich!


Here is this juicy stamp, just waiting to be smashed into an awesome button. Notice that there's plenty of yellow paper hanging over the edges, but most of that gets wrapped around and tucked into the middle of the button.



Ta-da! So, so thrilling!!

Add this Blog to Your Feed!!

The very lovely and generous Susan, author of the blog The Shoppe of my Dreams, has been very kind to Crab Apple Designs!


First, she featured items that she purchased from my shop AND is offering a giveaway to her readers. Etsy sellers are SO lucky to have folks like Susan who work so hard to promote handmade goodies and crafters. Thank you Susan!

So go to her blog and show her some love!

No Words, Just Pictures

Okay, a few words: I'm fresh out of words but these pictures are a clue as to what kinds of activities are happening around my house:

New Journals on the Way!

Be on the lookout for new crazy-cool journals on their way to the CrabAppleDesign etsy shop!

Progress on my First Mosiac Tile Project

A generous friend of the family gave me this round wood laminate table. It was crying out for renovation, so I've been slowly learning to do tile mosaic and finally I can see some progress.

Acting out of character for ME, I started the project without doing any research on tile, grout, etc. I just started gluing tiles and hoped that a pleasing pattern would result.

I ran out of tiles near the center, so I used flat marbles. A mistake? Maybe! I've been applying grout a patch at a time, and now that I'm at the marbles I'm finding it to be really hard to get the grout flat between the marbles. It was much easier to scrap the grout over uniformly flat tiles.

Almost done! Just need to finish grouting those funky marbles and then apply sealant. Hopefully a picture of the finished project will arrive this week!