Vintage Butttons

I've been playing with my Mom's buttons. She's got about a bushel of them ranging in age from around twenty to possibly a hundred and twenty years old, if she's remembering right that some of those that were from her own mother's sewing basket had either come from her grandmother's sewing basket or off her clothes. That would make them pre WWI and possibly late 19th century. But if such elderly buttons are among those I looked at today, their not declaring themselves. The buttons are not sorted by age but loosely by color and material--plastic, wood, metal, covered.

Even the bottles and jars Mom had them sorted into are vintage with 1950s era glass Alka-Seltzer bottles, pre-saftey cap prescription bottles, film canisters, coffee crystals, and various condiments. Where possibly she indicates the predominant colors of the buttons with the color of the lid..

I've been dreaming about these buttons for over five years ever since I first started looking through them when I was here for my Dad's last days in 2005. I became so enamored of them I set myself the task of devising uses for them other than sewing outfits as that is not my particular passion. Here are some of my ideas:

• Spread a bunch out on a tray representing as many colors and types as possibly and arranged in an artistic fashion then take a picture and feed that picture into the jigsaw puzzle game on my computer. (The picture above will serve for that as well but I'd like to do several more--earth tones, black and white, metallic...)
• I could even have such images turned into physical jigsaw puzzles. Picture that pic above as a 1000 or 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle.
  
• Take a bunch of high quality pictures of individual buttons and then turn them into graphics that can serve as buttons on web pages. Or other decorative purposes on web pages.
• Or the same graphics could be used on printed stationary, greeting cards, bookmarks.
  
• Sew them onto book covers and book bags as decoration or even function--in place of a clasp. And for some of the rounder shapes use on the crocheted bookmarks in the way I'm now using beads.
• Make a mosaic out of buttons for a wall hanging.
• Replace the buttons on some of my own clothes and/or sew them onto clothing as decoration.

Anybody have any more ideas?