Connecting Through Making and the Button of the Month Project

If you’ve been around The Frog in the Craft for a while, you’ll know that making has always been about more than just the finished object for me. It’s about process, curiosity, and the quiet satisfaction that comes from working with your hands.

I’ve recently shared a short video update about where I’m at with the business and what I’m focusing on now, and I wanted to bring that conversation here too.

👉 To watch the YouTube video, have a look at the end of this post…

A slower, more intentional way of sharing craft

Over the past year, I’ve been thinking carefully about how I want to share my work going forward. The slower and more sustainable type of making interests me the most. I don’t just mean in terms of materials, but also in the way that I use my energy, my attention, and my time.

Craft has a long history of being passed on quietly: at kitchen tables, in workshops, between friends, and across generations. Much of that knowledge was never formally recorded, and yet it survives through practice. That’s something I find endlessly fascinating, particularly when it comes to heritage textile crafts.

Heritage crafts and learning through practice

Many traditional textile techniques were not taught through formal systems or written instructions. People or the next generation learned them by doing, by watching, by repeating and by making mistakes along the way.

That’s something I want to honour more consciously in my work: allowing space for curiosity, experimentation, and learning without pressure. Not everything needs to be mastered quickly, and not everything needs a definitive answer to be worthwhile.

And when it comes to traditional or heritage crafts, what draws you to them: the history, the process, the materials, or something else entirely?

Introducing Button of the Month

With that in mind, I’ve started a Button of the Month project.

Each month, I’ll be focusing on one type of handmade button, exploring it through tutorials, practical tips, background information, and my own learning along the way. It’s something you can dip into at your own pace, with no pressure to keep up and no expectation to do everything.

But if you do choose to make along with me, alongside others, I’d love that and I’d love to see what you create too.

What’s coming next

The first button I’ll be sharing more about is the Yorkshire button. A dedicated post with a tutorial will follow shortly. It will look more closely at what we know about its background (we don’t really know much!) or history. I will show you how to make one yourself with a few ideas on projects.

For now, this post is simply about opening the conversation.