When I was a child, one of my favorite places in the world was my Nan’s house. It always smelled of banana bread, some over cooked meat due to health issues and her beautiful knitting project strewn across lap; if she wasn't working on a crossword puzzle. 

Her home was small, modest  and tucked in like a secret next to a busy tourist Main Street but every corner held treasures — the kind that only a child would recognize as precious.

Of all the wonders in her home, it was the cookie tins that held my heart. Old, repurposed shortbread tins, their paint chipped and stories worn, sat stacked like treasure chests on the shelves. But it wasn’t cookies I was after. Inside each tin were buttons — hundreds of them. Mismatched, colorful, shining like tiny jewels. I called them the button boxes.

I would sit at the kitchen table, lids off, sorting buttons into imagined kingdoms. The pearlescent ones were for queens and sea creatures. The brass ones belonged to knights or warriors. The translucent plastics became fairy coins or enchanted stones. Each button had a story — and so, I gave them life.

Years later, after Nan passed and life pulled me forward into the world of adulthood, I found myself returning to those moments again and again. Not just in memory, but in my art. I began collecting buttons and trinkets, small things that others might pass by: fragments of lace, vintage beads, broken jewelry, tiny toys. And I started creating what I now call button boxing — sculptural pieces that are part shrine, part memory capsule, part imaginative play.

Each piece I make is a quiet nod to that kitchen table kingdom. To those moments of stillness and magic, where the ordinary shimmered with possibility. Where beauty wasn’t bought — it was found, remembered, and cherished.