Recently I was at an anime convention with some friends, and, having gone to more than my fair share of conventions over the years, I ended up spending less time in panels and more time perusing the Artist’s Alley. Basically, I ended up doing research for the part of my business that involves handcrafts and art prints even though I was supposed to be on a mini vacation.
I clearly can’t separate my work out of my life. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Oh well….
Happily, I was rather inspired by what I found there. All manner of plushies, beautiful art prints, and a mind blowing multitude of pinback buttons. It was like I had discovered all this again.
Granted, none of this is new at any convention, but I had never looked at it from the viewpoint of a seller of handcrafted goods before. In the midst of all this what really captured my interest was the pinback buttons. Now, I’ll freely admit that I’ve never been much of a pinback wearing kind of girl. Reality is that I maybe have 4 or 5 pins to my name, and I pretty much never use them. However, this isn’t a reflection on the pins but on me.
You see… I always forget to wear them.
Just like how I forget to wear all the other jewelry I own.
Frankly, I’m lucky that I remember to eat some days. Three square meals in a day is a major accomplishment, let me tell you. So, personal adornment is pretty far down the ‘daily-concern-o-meter’.
In spite of my personal fails in this area, the pinbacks inspired me. I hadn’t even made it to Sunday at the convention before I was getting all sorts of ideas for unique pinbacks I could make. By the time I made it home from the convention late on Sunday night, I had a list a notebook page long and growing. The very next day I sat down and bought a professional button maker, and the madness began.
So now, I have an ever expanding collection of button designs available at my Etsy store. I’ve started off with the holidays because that time of year is pretty darn imminent, but soon there will be more button designs that will have pop culture and nerd themes. I’m super excited.
For those of you keeping up with my antics on Etsy, I would love to hear from you about what kind of button designs you’d like to see from me in the future. Do you want to see more vintage inspired, pop culture designs, or both?