Pallet for Home

OH MY GOSH! How flipping cute are these things! Seriously, I could eat them up (although my stomach would not thank me, so I won't).

I have been wanting to make myself some adorable wood buttons for a LONG time, and when my father in law decided to uproot some of his plants I begged and pleaded with him (ok, I just asked him) to hold them for me.

He just kind of looked at me when I said I wanted to make buttons with them.  I smiled, and he saved me a plant!

Here is my victim:

This picture was taken after I brutally attacked it with my jigsaw and threw it in the woods like spoiled meat.

When I tell this story I make it seem like I got my plant and then got to work on it immediately. Ha. Umm, it may or may not have sat at the corner of our driveway for about three months, then sat under our porch for another month until the hubby threatened to throw it away.  I just wanted to make sure the wood was nice and dry! ;)

I finally attacked it this weekend at the same time I attacked my pallet.  Guess I was in a violent mood!

I took my jigsaw to it and cut off the branches to make them easier to work with.

It's probably a good idea to wear some sort of protective eyewear so dirt and debri don't fly into your eyes.  Not that I didn't or anything.

Once the pieces were more manageable I held onto them with a furniture clamp and cut away.  I squealed with delight as each new piece fell to the ground!

I gave them a light sanding and got ready to drill holes.  Here they are pre-drill.

I grabbed our drill and used the 1/16 drill bit to make the holes.  I put the wood pieces on top of an old corkboard I paint on so it wouldn't matter if I drilled through it.  Worked perfect.  About five minutes later I had these:

Freaking - adorable - wood- buttons!

I chose to not put any poly on mine.  Partly due to laziness, but mostly because I love the natural wood look.

I mean seriously, look how precious they are looking all buttony:

So there you have it folks.  Buttons.  For free.

Cheers!