A 3-D depiction of the galaxy made with one million buttons has been declared a record-breaker.

The handiwork of Angela Rafferty, who runs the People's Museum, in Grainger Street, Newcastle, has been certified by the Guinness Book of Records as the world's biggest button display.

The work, which measures three by three by two metres, was made single-handedly by Angela.

Called The Celestial Heavens, it features 1,163,342 buttons, many donated by people from across the world, which took six years to collect and a year to assemble.

The sun was made from military buttons - 32 regiments, including the Durham Light Infantry and Northumberland Fusiliers, are featured - as a tribute to service personnel who fought for Britain.

Angela, of Hamsterley Colliery, near Consett, has spent £2,260 and 2,000 hours on the project. She said: "I'm ecstatic at creating a record.

"We set out to have an exhibition for the millennium that the public could be involved with and would be historically important.

"The buttons go right back to Roman and Saxon times and there's even one from 1860 that came from Newcastle Lunatic Asylum.

"The public response to my appeals for buttons was phenomenal."

The display can be viewed at the museum, from Mondays to Saturdays, between 10am and 5pm. Admission is free.