Gertrude Sofia - Button Queen

Allow me to use these photogaphs to introduce my maternal grandmother, Gertrude Sofia Lundvall, born March the 17th 1898. Date of the photograph in question is probably 1950's or 60's. Her hairstyle was remarkably similar to that of Queen Elizabeth of England, so I borrowed the British crown jewels in a manual cut and paste operation and have used the resulting image in multiple projects.

This particular project is a 4inch by 4inch collaborative book featuring buttons and button card designs. There are 15 participants, each of us has made 15 cards of our own 4x4 inch design and mailed them off to our hostess in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri. She will sort the pages so we get one of each and they will be bound together in a book format.

There were no specifications as to button color but I chose to use small vintage white buttons, many of them mother of pearl or river clam shell in origin, rather than plastic.

With 15 finished cards to play with I gave in to my urge to arrange and photograph them in various combinations.

Here I have grouped together an arrangement of the backsides of the cards created for this swap. They were made from some photographs taken of vintage sewing notions and contain contact information.

Fia, as my grandmother was called would have found the addition of the crown and royal jewels to her portrait amusing.

Carina