Collecting Bakelite

As you can see from some of my recent posts, collecting buttons has become somewhat of an interest. Okay, that's putting it too mildly. I'll bump that up to an obsession.
When I come across a button stash and make it my own, my first thought is, are there any Bakelite buttons in here? Bakelite is an early plastic and highly collectible in its many forms.
Bakelite was used widely for game pieces, billiard balls, phones, jewelry, buttons and more. The later development of other plastics makes it sometimes hard to tell at first glance if an object is made from Bakelite or not.
However there is a fairly simple test and I wrote about it here:

How to Tell if Your Vintage Buttons are Genuine Bakelite

This test should work on any Bakelite item, not just buttons!

My First Swagbucks Reward!

I really thought I had written about Swagbucks before, but I guess not. You may have seen the Swagbucks search engine on the side bar of this blog and wondered what Swagbucks is all about.
Basically, if you search the web through their search engine, you can earn Swagbucks. Earn enough, and you can redeem them for prizes.
I'd heard from enough people who'd actually received their prizes, that I was willing to give it a try.
The results of the Swagbucks search engine are good, because they are by Google and Ask. The more searching you do, the more bucks you earn, sometimes 2SB or 3SB at a time!
And there's other ways to earn, recycling your cell phones or old video games, which I still want to try.
Today I made it to my goal(130 Swagbucks)so I could redeem my first prize, a $10 Starbucks card!! Pretty sweet, for just doing what I'm normally doing, searching the web. I'll let you know when I get it, to see how long it takes.
There are lots of other prizes and different gift cards. You can even get $5 into your Paypal account for 70SB.
Anyway, it's worth a shot. I've installed the toolbars on both my computers and have trained my husband to use it as well!!