Button Earrings.

I swore off these things years ago.  Very popular when I was young, I collected them in all kinds of colors and patterns, metals, plastics and fabric.  It was virtually impossible to not find a pair to match whatever you were wearing.  How cute they were, sitting on each side of my little round face, the perfect complement to the blue eye shadowed and pink lip glossed circle in the middle.  Cute...until that little round face became a big round face.  Then the name of the game was "lengthen, elongate, slim."  Button earrings don't do that, so away they went, along with the belts, the round necks and the ruffled collars.  None of the above is capable to lengthening, elongating or slimming.  I haven't worn anything but hoops and the occasional drop earrings for the past 20 years.  I bought a bunch of clip-on button earrings (or earbobs, as my Aunt Effie used to call them) from a neighbor a few years back, with the intention of selling them.  I have sold a few pairs, but I've bought more.  I still don't like them on me, so I sell a pair here and there, hoping that someone will take the whole lot off my hands one day, like I did for my neighbor.  

A few days ago I found an estate sale which had a ton of button earrings.  They're still fun to look at, what with all the colors and everything.  I even bought a couple of pairs, just for fun.

I thought the brown and white pair was just unique, and the turquoise and gold pair is one of my favorite color combos.  Since I like to jazz up my shoes periodically, I thought I might make some shoe clips out of them.  The green beads were for my daughter, who wears "pearls" pretty much every day.  I tried them on and I don't know if I was hallucinating or what, but they didn't look half bad!  Big round face notwithstanding, I was digging the look!  I even wore a pair to church.  Could this be the end of an era?  Could this be the start of something big?  Like, big round face with round earrings on each side which make it look bigger?  Or maybe I've been too hard on myself all these years.

If you look right in the front of this display, there is a pair of faux-tortoiseshell earrings, which are the ones I wore today.  I love tortoiseshell, faux or otherwise, root beer and amber lucite and bakelite, and even the plain old plastic stuff.  As you can see, I have a small collection.  This gets used a lot.  (The cameo box is a vintage Avon dusting powder decanter.)  I guess I love it more than I hate button earrings. 

I encourage you to revisit something that you may have given up wearing a long time ago, because you felt it wasn't "for you" anymore.  Maybe you just needed a change of pace.  Maybe you needed to regain your confidence.  Or maybe now it's just time to give yourself a break and wear whatever it is with pride.  Keep a look out for me--I'll be the one happily wearing the button earrings.