Barbossa's Buttons

K has decided to start early on next May's Comicon and do an outfit for her BF Bob. So we are doing Captain Barbossa's outfit, rather modified, for him--partly because I have made this pattern 4 times now with various variations so I feel pretty comfortable making it. I'm sure I will still do something wacky, but at least this time we were super careful to keep the nap of the pattern running all one direction, unlike the Royal Navy Admiral costume I did a couple of years ago. Also this time I refused to pay 60 dollars for buttons, so K sat down with some sculpey, we made a master mold, and then she made 50 "pieces of eight" buttons that we can use on the coat. (I haven't told her yet how many buttons the waistcoat needs). I think they look cool and I just hope the paint can survive being handled a bit--they aren't functional buttons so they won't have to fit through buttonholes, but being on a garment will mean some wear and tear. Here is the movie original:

Here's the buttons out of the toaster, on the right:

Here K has begun sorting the "A" team from the "B" team, since we made a lot of extras:

The buttons were successful enough that I will make more of these for 18th century coats, though I will use tinted sculpey if I need to have them be actively useful buttons, and put a bit of wire coiled up inside to reinforce them.