Wire and button snowflake

Possibly my children are getting a little bored of robins round here! Yesterday Maria came home after her morning at school, and the weather was too wet and horrible to do anything but light the stove early and find an activity to do right in front of it. I suggested we might make robins out of buttons and wire, but Maria very firmly decided she would make a snowflake out of buttons and wire instead!

It was actually an excellent idea, especially as I had some white, craft wire (I think silver would have looked good too, but I had no silver). I cut 3 long pieces for her and started her off by threading them through a medium sized white button and arranging them evenly.

Maria then threaded smaller buttons on to the wires.

She used mainly white buttons, with just a few little silver ones she picked out too. Occasionally she needed a bit of help pulling the wire all the way through, but generally it was well within her abilities, the wire was quite thin and flexible. And, very quickly, she had created a lovely snowflake ornament.

I helped her twist the wire around behind each of the final buttons.

This one is going to be another of the decorations for our Advent tree.

Before the girls started creating decorations for this, I think I had visions of them all being made from felt or wool, very much as the original inspiration tree had. And I'm sure there will be more felt/wool ones coming up, but I'm now really enjoying the fact that there are different materials being used too.

And as for the wire and button robin plan? I really didn't want to steal Maria's great idea and end up creating a fancier, more intricate snowflake than hers (well to be honest, I quite wanted to, but it really didn't seem right so I resisted the temptation!) so I stuck to creating the robin...

I think I might have preferred him with silver wire if we'd had any.

And although I quite like him, I much prefer Maria's snowflake. I'm also sure any fancy snowflake I might have come up with wouldn't have had quite the same charm as hers. And I'm very happy she's started another snowflake, with some gorgeous vintage mother of pearl buttons, that we can put in our 'hamper' of Christmas decorations to be gifted.

Sally.