Easy DIY Button and Bead Elephant Nursery Wall Art

by Thrifty Artsy Girl

As you all know I just love making my own wall art to decorate my house. So naturally I would want to create some for my family and friends too! When one of my super sweet coworkers announced the she was expecting her first baby (it's a boy!) I knew immediately what I wanted to give to her: a framed button elephant.

easy diy button and bead elephant nursery wall art, bedroom ideas, crafts, wall decor

I asked my friend for paint samples from her baby's room so that I could match my wall art to the space. She was doing a grey-blue and grey scheme in the room. Just perfect for a grey elephant. I gathered products I already had and purchased the rest of my supplies off of eBay. I am not a button hoarder (as of yet ;) so I bought a small lot of grey buttons of varying sizes and I also picked up some grey toned beads (to fill in the gaps) for $3 all together. Here's the break down of supplies I used:

Button and Bead Elephant Supplies:

-Buttons of varying size, of the color of your choosing

-Beads to fill in the gaps, of the color of your choosing

-Canvas (I used 8x10)

-Empty frame to put around the canvas

-Hot glue gun

-Small tools to help place beads (tweezers, guitar pick, container etc.)

-Time

I used an 8x10 canvas and rifled through my frame stash for a frame that would slip right onto the canvas. I found one that I had purchased at Salvo complete with price tag that said $1.79. I mixed some paint up and color matched the blue to the baby's room and painted the previously brown wood frame to a sweet baby blue.

By then I had received my buttons in the mail (if you don't want to purchase buttons on eBay they have packets of buttons at Walmart and craft stores in all the colors of the rainbow). I laid them out on the counter just to see how easy it would be to make an elephant shape out of buttons. It was not difficult at all. Here's a cell phone shot of my first attempt.

I then laid them all out on my canvas. I used my better half, Cory's opinion on how the elephant was turning out because I thought I might be biased and I wanted the finished product to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that it was indeed an elephant. At first I wanted to use a black button for the eyeball. Cory put the kabash on that idea. He said he couldn't tell what it was. So I painted one of the buttons white and placed a black button on top for the pupil.

Here's a cell phone pic of my "dry fit" complete with some beads that Cory put squirting out of the elephants trunk.

After I had all the buttons right where I wanted them I simply picked them up one by one and put a dab of hot glue on the back and placed them right back where they were. After all the buttons were glued I got out my beads.

I put a small amount of beads into a Tupperware container to shake out onto my glue. I didn't want any bare spots so I simply piped some glue into the spaces between the buttons and shook beads out onto the top of the glue. Then I tapped the canvas over the Tupperware container to catch any loose beads. I used tweezers, a guitar pick and my fingers to form the glue and beads into the shape of the trunk, legs and back.

I made the tail completely out of beads. I put down a layer of glue and then shook on some beads. I did have to use the tweezers to place the darker beads so the tail would show up.

Here's a pic of the finished project. I love how my button and bead elephant turned out and it cost about $5 to make! It was a very simple project, although very tedious so make sure you have a couple hours set aside to do it.

To see more pictures of the finished product, or the complete tutorial visit my blog :)