I have just "inherited" my mother's button tin

[SoupDragon]

[happy sigh]

I say "inherited" but she is alive and well :o

I am rummaging through it looking for the old favourites that were there when I was a child...

(5lb Quality Street tin if you like that kind of detail)

You lucky thing .

I love button tins.Proper ones with years of history.

I bet you've got gold ones an' everything in there.

Oooh, so jealous. Give it a stroke for me.

How full is it? slight buttonaholic, cheerfully passing the skill on to toddler DS who seems to love them as much as I do

Blimey. I thought my mum was the only one with a button tin. And!! hers is also a quality street tin. It's gold with a pretty panel in the centre of the lid. I had many a happy hour rummaging around it and stringing the buttons together. She still has it and now my dd rummages in it whenever we visit. I have a button box but it's small and has boring plastic buttons in it. My mum has fabulous collection of mother of pearl, glass, tin, all sorts. You've just made me smile thinking about it. Welcome relief from the rest of the doom and gloom on here today. I'm going to have to think of a happy thread to start..

So jealous. my mum has her grandmother's button box, it has lovely glass and mother-of-pearl buttons and some Edwardian boot buttons. I used to love putting my hands in and stirring the buttons as a child.

It's probably 3/4 full and I think it also has the contents of my grandmother's sewing basket so it has oddities like little paper packets of needles, a beautiful engraved crochet hook (tiny though! Must be for lace) and a little wooden pot with old fashioned suspender fasteners in :o

[sigh]
[rummage]

Gold buttons: check
Mother of Pearl: Check

I was going to ask if it has other little bits.
All the best ones have.

Numtummum, you must have missed the many threads on MN full of posters reminiscing about their mother's button tins :)

My mum said "Do you want the button tin? You don't have to..."
My dad said "Don't take it if you don't want it"
I clutched it to my body and said "No, no.. that's fine, I"ll take it off your hands..."

I've only just found Arts and Crafts! Relatively new to MN and previously distracted by the bunfights elsewhere but having now found my new spiritual home, I shall immediately commence work on a pouffe and make myself more comfortable.

After the first Button Tin thread, I bought a tin of buttons on Ebay

I now have a lovely Emma Bridgewater jubilee tin with my collection in. I don't think this one will fit in the same tin.

Ooh you lucky person.

My grandma has just moved into a home due to poor health and dementia and she wants us all to take treasures from her home. The pearls and sapphires have been taken by my siblings whilst I covet the button bag (a handmade little number full of lovely buttons and coat buckles). But we cannot find it......

No! It can't be lost!

I've got a button tin full of beautiful buttons. I can't sew a button on for anything.

Ahhh I'd forgotten about the button tin. My mum has my grandmother's tin somewhere, my sister and I used to spend hours playing with it, sorting them into different types and finding our favourites. I can still remember the smell of it.

oh, I inherited my late grandma's button box. I used to play with it (my treasure!) when I was a kid and I always knew I wanted it. It's got so many memories.

And buttons that are 20, 30, 40 - some 50 and 60 years old possibly far more because I think some came from my late great grandma! Every style imaginable. I sometimes take it out and spread them all out and remember the games I used to play. Some of them I can remember the clothes they were from! Some of them look like they haven't been on an item of clothing for 100 years!

Funny, isn't it, the things that mean so much?

I LOVE my button tin. I remarked to my nanna a couple of years ago that I had no buttons for sewing projects and she GAVE ME HER TIN! It's a full size round cake tin full and they have clearly been actually collected off actual clothes since the 50s/60s (I think some of them were her mum/my G.Grandma's).
There are plastic, fabric, glass, wood, Bakelite, shell, metal, military, from huge coat buttons to teeny baby buttons. My DDs love getting it out and having a rummage too :)

I've found the embossed military one we always used for making wax seals on fake documents... :)

And the bizarre "token" which says Apostleship of Prayer in league with the Sacred Heart with a picture of a ginger Jesus. No one in my family is at all religious yet it's been in the tin for 40 years.

I created a button jar a few weeks ago - especially for my DS (1 to tomorrow) to rummage through when he gets older. I had great fun taking all my spare buttons from their little envelopes and putting them in the jar - I knew I'd spent bought a lot in Hobbs but I'd no idea just how much over the last twenty years.

I didn't realise it was meant to be a tin; I just don't have enough for a tin

It takes years to grow into a tin :)

I also want my late grandad's tin. Currently with my mum. It's got all his badges in. His Ovaltineys club badge and stuff like that. It's lovely.

I wonder what memories like this my children will have. DD wasn't interested in the button tin I put together and I didn't think of it with DSs :(

I agree with that, soupy. maybe even a generation or two!

I haven't seen a nice tin for a while. At christmas the sweet tins are now plastic. My mum has all her sewing patterns in a very old Thornton's Easter Egg box which is absolutely beautiful. They just don't make things like that now. I suppose you could buy a decorative tin but somehow that is not the same.

Wow.

(I love button tins!)