Innertubes and Pleather

When my mother-in-law came for a visit last week she wore this beautiful pin that I had to "pick apart" to see how it was made.  She explained to me that she had gotten it from an art show and that it was made out of innertubes.  An innertube... as in tire, innertube?  Yes.  And it was beautiful. 

Well that got my wheels turning, of course.  Hmmm. I know I could just go to Walmart and buy an innertube for less than $5.00 but let's hit the thrift store first.  I ended up finding a steering wheel cover at the thrift store that I could cut apart, perfect.  I did end up buying an innertube at Walmart also.  Wow, experimenting is so much fun!

Yesterday I was in JoAnn's buying pleather (fake leather) to experiment with also.  I was quite disappointed that JoAnn's only had black, cream, grey and bright yellow.  Where were the rest of the bright colors?  Hot pink, lime green, radical reds?  In the same shopping center was another thrift store. So I head on over there to find... innertubes, pleather, hard fabric... anything that I could make a pin out of because I now have more ideas in my head.  

As a side note I LOVE painting on buttons.  I have about 100 buttons in various stages of being painted.  But I don't exactly know what to do with them.  I can always turn them into pendants which I have done in the past and wear them quite frequently but the artist in me is always trying to create new things.

My idea was to create a larger base for my painted buttons and turn them into pins that women could wear on their coats and also light weight enough to be worn on blouses as well.

In the thrift store I stumbled upon the purse section.  WOW!  Why didn't I think of this before!  Purses are made of various pleather, vinyl and  "hard fabric" that could easily be cut up.  Perfect.  This is what I found (totalling maybe $5.00):

And this is what I created last night:

I just love the way they all turned out but here are my two favorites:

To me, the one on the left looks like a face with it's hair standing straight up.  The black and white one is my largest one so far. The diameter measures 2.5"

Eventually all of these will be for sale at my Etsy shop but I don't think some of them are quite done yet.  I want to add lime green backings to some and make others bigger and bolder.  The thrift store had one green purse, why didn't I buy it?!?!  "oh darn" I say sarcastically "I may just have to go on another search today".