Buttons earned her BFA and MFA from Carnegie-Mellon University. After living in Michigan and Texas, she settled in Wisconsin. A poster she created for the Wustum Art Museum (Racine, WI) was chosen to tour nationally in the Philip Morris Exhibition of Posters of Small US Museums. For eight years she was an editor for Little Golden Books. For twelve years she owned and operated Snowstar Ltd. stationery stores in Sturgeon Bay and Fish Creek.

She studied with Craig Blietz and others at the Kewaunee Academy of Fine Art. After she left this traditional school of representational realism, she gave herself permission to be free to express what she wants and feels.

She paints full-time, continuing to study with Master Artists in Wisconsin (including Michael Shane Neal) and Arizona (especially Milt Kobayashi).

Her work has been juried into the Annual Miller Art Museum exhibitions and the Hardy Gallery shows. She has also been invited to the Hardy Collection Invitational exhibits and the Door Prize Portrait Event. The Unitarian Universalist Gallery featured her work in 2009: solo shows followed in 2010 at the Hope Gallery in Sturgeon Bay and the ART Garage in Green Bay.

Buttons is currently represented by Fine Line Designs Gallery in Ephraim, Wisconsin.

She has been known as Buttons since "preemie" incubator days when she was red and scraggly. Family visits weren't to see the new baby, but to see the "button-nose" which soon became shortened to "Buttons." She signs her work with her given name, Archelle.

She lives in the Door County woods with her two dogs and Dutch husband.