painting buttons to match

[Troglodyte]

In August (2024) the day before the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow some bandmates and I took the train to Kilmarnock to visit the McCallum bagpipe factory, which has attached the McCallum bagpipe showroom and the Ayrshire Kilt Shop.

At the kilt shop I saw all the same 400 pound House of Edgar and Gaelic Themes jackets I saw at all the Glasgow kilt shops, but on one rack was a lovely Argyll in a heavy grey tweed brimming with texture and character.

It fit. I was afraid to ask the price but when I did it was an astonishing 70 pounds. I bought it.

Inside was a paper label handwritten "McCallum J. MacGregor" so evidently Mr MacGregor never picked up his lovely jacket.

When I got home to California I found out that the jacket was a very close match to a waistcoat I have...except for the buttons.

In this collage top left you can see two of the removed waistcoat buttons, oddly dull, compared to the jacket buttons.

Top right shows half of the waistcoat buttons having received a coat of semi-gloss rich deep brown paint.

Bottom left shows the buttons receiving their 2nd coat, drybrushing a lighter brown hitting the raised areas of the buttons.

Bottom right is the result.



Here's a closeup

What a find..!

Some people get all the luck..!

But, if you hadn't told us about the buttons, or the not-part-of-an-original-set waistcoat, I doubt anyone would have ever noticed.

A superb match with both!

I know some people like to use a wood-stain when matching antlers, as it works the same as on wood, but your painting trick is well-worth remembering.

Myself, I might have been tempted to swap all the buttons - for leather, perhaps - but the paint does as good a job, and at a fraction of the price. Excelent.