Polymer buttons

Here's a picture of the polymer clay buttons I recently made. I tried using a product designed to make molds, but it didn't work out very well, so then I just made the molds out of polymer clay. I pushed a button or other shape into the clay and baked it. Then I pushed clay into the baked mold and pulled it out. I trimmed around the shaped object until I got it the way I wanted it, then painted it with mica powders. I got my mica powders at this site because you can get a teaspoon for a $1 and you really need very little of them. http://www.coastalscents.com/cfwebstore/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_id=35 Some kind person on a scrapbooking blog gave me the tip. You should wear a mask when using mica powders because some are metals and you really don't want to get this stuff in your lungs. One of them came with warnings to use gloves and a mask with the term "cyanide" in the name! It just seemed like it wasn't worth the risk so I didn't use that one! I then baked them for 10 minutes at 275 degrees and painted a varnish called varathane (the water-based kind) on them. I haven't tested them out to see how resilient they are after you sew them on, but I did drop some on the floor and they stood up to that test! Also, they are very light weight and so shouldn't drag your work down.