Bakelite Button on Barkcloth Pillow

Plastic buttons are functional and washable and come in every conceivable variety of shape, size, style, and color. They can be carved, floral, leafy, figural, convex, concave, you name it. They’re little tiny works of art. Big score if you can find them with their original packaging!

Novelty Serie

In the first part of the century, you’d find them primarily on clothing but over the past 50 years,crafters, artists and folk artists have used the versatile little guys on everything ranging from artwork to crafts to household objects.

While there are many highly collectible and pricey buttons (think limited edition, commemorative or political) and these are truly amazing, collecting by anyone is easy since they’re so small, ubiquitous and useful. One can go to any estate sale or antique mall with a good chance of finding some run-of-the-mill yet beautiful little gems hidden away in some grandmother’s vintage candy tin.

I look for buttons with character or sets that I can use on pillows or clothing or artwork but find that I really can’t pass up any buttons. Fortunately, they make plastic containers to sort the things!  

Below are more links to find out about buttons or to buy some treasures of your own:

National Button Society

The Waterbury Button Museum in the Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut

Search on Etsy or Ebay (and I have. Often.) to find a super selection!

Pam Berry is a pioneer of the craft and zine scene. She’s co-founder of Chickfactor, an influential musician (Black Tambourine, The Castaway Stones, Glo-Worm and more), a seamstress, button collector, pie maker, and a national treasure in the US and the UK.

What’s your craft handle? Any previous incarnations?
I go by Craft Ho for everything I make now, but several years ago I made cushions and cards under the name Chin Chin.

Tell us about your craft origins.
As a kid I used to collect found bits and bobs to use for future projects and keep them in a box until I thought of something to do with them (hoarder, moi?). The earliest thing I can remember making is a heap of hand-sewn beanbags when I was six, using soybeans as the stuffing – there was a ginormous old dried-up soybean field behind our house in Chesapeake, VA that all the neighbourhood kids used to play in and these hard, dry soybeans struck me as the perfect beanbag innards. Later I learned to sew properly with a machine and pattern in a junior high school class (I made the skateboard pillow with the bare feet on it, it was either that or the light bulb) and I’ve been cursing patterns and cutting corners ever since. I used to make clothes in high school – including my prom dress, a taffeta/white/shoulderless affair that is the anti-Pam dress now, but it felt like an achievement.
My mother is probably the one who got me started making things, she always had projects going on the sewing machine and was great at crochet, she taught me when I was seven or eight, though after the proud moment of finishing the scary orangey brown halter top, I didn’t really go back to crochet. She sent me to Vacation Bible School as a youngun, which was pretty much two full weeks of nada but crafting, and it’s where I learned the all-important life skill of making papier mache lightbulb maracas. When I was 12 she let me go to the summer pottery club at the local high school that had a kiln and a row of kick-wheels. I mostly print cards with a gocco now and sew cushions and totes and do embroidery and make jewellery out of vintage buttons, but I still haven’t settled on the one craft I want to focus on! Maybe I never will.

What inspires you? Any major influences?
Things that make me go weak in the knees are old food packaging and advertising, vintage typefaces, diner china, button cards, letterpress and show posters, 1950s department store logos and coat labels, fabric ranging from leaf-infested barkcloth to Mahler fleurs and Eames small dot, all things Bakelite. Thirties stepped outlines, forties colours, fifties and sixties dress shapes, they all inform what I get up to in the craft room in different ways.
Can you describe your process? Do you start with an idea, a material, a need?
I really like to start with a material, and I stock up on things I fancy as I come across them, in charity shops usually. But these days I’m so busy with the child-wrangling by day and the working by night that I don’t get much time to start a project for the sake of using the fabulous buttons I just scored or whatever. So these days I start with a need – usually I’m late with a birthday gift so I try to figure out a present to make using materials I already have from the stash. Or I’ve signed up for a craft fair and about two nights before think, “Gah, I’m not going to have anything to sell if I don’t get to stepping!” Because I love making things and I’m perpetually flat broke, I’ve enacted the rule of never buying gifts if I can make something instead, but my inability to start anything on time means that I’m always about 10 late handmade gifts behind where I want to be.

Fav materials? How do you feel about buttons?
My amour for buttons may border on unhealthy, but they are such satisfying little chunks of form + function. Bakelite buttons shaped like birds, old resin ones shaped like flowers (so great for making brooches!), big coloured ones for fabulous coats I haven’t made yet, I love them all. When I was moving to London in 1998 and boxed up some of the most important things to post in advance I handed over one big box full of hundreds of buttons and the P.O. clerk looked at the customs tag, shook the box next to her ear and said, “Honey, this box has got a story to tell!” She wasn’t wrong.

What are you currently making?
I’ve just designed and printed 500 copies of the cover of the next Hangover Lounge EP. I’ve done a print run of two new gocco card designs and I’m about to start on a bunch of gingham silhouette stuffed critters with vintage buttons for eyes and nose similar to the larger ones I made my girls for Valentine’s Day. Since I got hold of the awesome Sublime Stitching books and patterns from Jenny Hart I’ve gone embroidery nutty, and lately I’ve been getting the girls to draw pictures onto fabric or hankies or aprons which I’ll then embroider. These end up being gifts mostly. I’ve also been stitching up hankies and stamping the fabric, then selling them as a double pack. They’re slow burners, but I keep making them because I love cloth hankies. I’ve got log cabin pillows using fabric copies of vintage knitting patterns on the go, also little tote bags and bigger sewing totes (belated Secret Santa gifts, streeeetch out that holiday). This month I’m going to confront my nemesis the pattern and make a couple of sixties dresses, an A-line skirt and a spring cape.

Do you see the same types of craft motifs in the UK as in the US? (Here it’s all owls, mustaches, robots, and octopus)
Owls, we’ve got ‘em. Robots less so in the DIY world but very much so in the trendy kiddie stuff world, and last year’s London Popfest tote featured an octopus illustration. They do a lot of putting a bird on it on these shores, too. So I guess a lot of the tropes cross the pond, but I don’t think we have anywhere close to the saturation of DIY craft going on here that you have in the States, so I’m not really sick of any of it. Design saturation in hand-fashioned wares is a problem I’d very much like to contend with!

How do second-hand stores in the UK compare to those in the U.S? What is the UK version of Michael’s, Joann’s, etc.?
Man, I really miss American thrift stores, yard sales, flea markets, and fabric shops that have massive haberdasheries included. Charity shops here are tiny little places compared to the mahoosive thrifts in the US, and because of that it’s really hard to score good supplies/vintage anything. I have actually left a charity shop empty-handed more often than I have with a purchase, it’s a world gone wrong. With the exception of the John Lewis department store which does both, large fabric stores tend to only sell fabric, then you have to go to a separate haberdashery to score all the other things you need to sew with – D rings, bias binding, needles, etc. We did just have a Hobbycraft open not far away from us, it’s the closest thing to a Michael’s we have, two countem two floors of habdash and craft! But it’s pricy.

What craft fairs have you done? Any upcoming shows? Ever think about Crafty Bastards?
I just did the Rockmount Spring Fling at Ava and Lulu’s school, it was fun and it got me to make a bunch of stuff. We have those twice a year but may start doing them more often. On the same day as the Spring Fling my friend Tim did the Carousel fair in Hackney, that one’s a monthly fair that we’ve shared a table at before, so this time he took some of my wares to sell at his and I took some of his to mine (he letterpresses great cards and beer mats as Half-Pint Press). I’m hoping to be at the next Carousel in May with him, but I haven’t been organized enough till now to seek out bigger fairs. I wish I could blink myself over to Crafty Bastards this year!

If you could organize one event and had an unlimited budget, what would it look like?
It would look like the British cousin of Crafty Bastards and Renaissance but held indoors due to our mercurial weather. In my dream world it would take place in Crystal Palace, South London where I live, for with an unlimited budget I might be able to buy the old empty Woolworths building and a couple of shops either side and bust through the walls to make one space safe for massive craft fair action. In between craft fairs the space would be a craft studio with classes in sewing/letterpress/gocco/screenprinting/etc, a shop and a craft book lending library. This is a project my pals Jenn and Tim and I talk about a lot, we just haven’t figured out how to make it happen yet.

You can see and buy Pam’s goods at:
See: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pernfors88/sets/72157594546092886/ on flickr
Commission: Drop me a line on craft_ho@yahoo.co.uk
Buy: On etsy from craftho http://www.etsy.com/people/craftho (shop opens April 15th)

“I couldn’t believe there wasn’t anybody who was making a strap with any amount of, you know, taste,” he recalls. “I just assumed there [was], in my own world, what would be a good-looking guitar strap with some style to it.” There wasn’t, and the overload of tie-dyed cotton and motorcycle-gang-evoking leather led Perkins, then in his mid-20s, to a revelation. “I figured it out: Guitar straps were music-product-industry accessories. They were being made by the music-products industry, but it was almost like a fashion-industry thing: accessories. So I was thinking, I’m a musician; I’m not a designer. These guys aren’t designers, either, and … maybe I have better taste than they do.”

This was in Long Beach, California, back in 1999. That year, Perkins started experimenting with making straps that would be everything many music-product-industry accessories aren’t: tasteful, of course, but also sturdy, sustainable, and cruelty- and sweatshop-free. He started by creating some prototypes and saving up a few hundred dollars to hand over to a professional manufacturer. But when he got back a mediocre product, he moved out of his apartment, slept on a friend’s sofa, and saved for a sewing machine that he then had to learn how to use. “It took me 10 years to figure out how to make them,” he says of what his company, Couch, now touts as “the strongest, best looking guitar straps in the world.”

They’re all made from animal-friendly materials: recycled seat-belt webbing and dead-stock furniture, marine, and auto vinyl. Perkins is partial to the straps he made from ’80s Mercedes Benz upholstery. Man or Astro-Man? commissioned straps in industrial-orange seat-belt webbing. Beck, Lou Barlow, and Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara all own Couches. Hers is silk-screened with Victorian-style imagery by Los Angeles painter and author Matty Byloos and a part of Couch’s Artist Series, to which street-art provocateur Skullphone and recycled-clothing team Social Studies Design have also contributed some extra visual oomph.

These days, Perkins is pretty happy about the choices he’d have for his gold-sparkle Tele – and he’s even happier that other people have those choices, too. “I think with an indie band, ultimately everyone would love to travel around the world and have all their bills paid and have all these people go see them play,” he says. “But in the short run, what you really would like to do is make music and make new friends through your music. And I think crafters do that, too. And the only way to do it is to get out there and do it yourself, whether you’re making a song or you’re making a handbag.”

Over the phone from California, Perkins talks about learning how to sew, teaching others how to sew, and what’s so great about unsold Cadillac components.

Did you have any strap-related training? Or did you just decide you wanted to make a guitar strap and then figure it out?

I wanted to make guitar straps, and I kind of figured it out. … There’s the fashion fashion industry in L.A., and then in Orange County there’s the surf-wear fashion industry. I had some friends in that industry, too, so I had some leads in where to start looking. I was kind of getting amazed! People were making them for me in really small batches when I started doing it. But … they weren’t getting made with really good quality at all. And I was really bummed because I saved up all my money, and I’d take a bunch of straps in, and they’d come back and they’d look not really good. Or they wouldn’t be strong. Plus, I was making vegan guitar straps, and they didn’t exist, so I had to design something that would last if it wasn’t made out of leather.

Somewhere around the halfway point I was kind of giving up. I was at a show in Long Beach, and this girl Nancy [Osborne] that I knew had this really great handbag, and I asked her where she bought it. She said she made it, and I realized that she was kind of a sewing master. She had this line called Jack Blue, and she attended Cordwainers boot college in London and learned how to sew with all the kinds of machines that I liked. So I quit my job and worked for her for like 8 bucks an hour, and she taught me how to sew.

So do you make all of them now?

I don’t. I make some of them, but I have friends that work at Couch now. If you go to the Couch page, there’s page called Who’s Making Your Strap, and you can see a picture of everyone who’s at Couch, and it even has a bio. There’s this guy Jay [Pezzelle] – he’s way more technically adept than I am at sewing. He actually taught sewing at Orange Coast community college. … He’s worked at Fox Racing and the seat-belt handbag company [Harveys].

I learned meticulously how to sew from [Nancy], even to the point of what kind of sewing machine I wanted. I went on eBay and bought the same exact machine as hers, and it got delivered to the door of her shop. I set up my own machine and learned how to sew alongside of her. She was really cool to let me do that. … She wasn’t really looking for an employee. And now I have friends that don’t know how to sew, who are musicians and don’t have a job, and that’s who I’ve been training lately. And they’re getting pretty good, too.

You’re kind of supporting the rock industry with your craft industry.

Yeah! And it helps, too, for people who buy the straps to know that it’s guitar straps made by people who actually play guitar. It’s a sweatshop-free thing, where, obviously, the extreme example would be little slave kids making [sneakers]. The opposite of that isn’t only the ethical thing, but if you’re gonna buy stuff – it sounds cheesy – but it’s made with love. If someone actually plays guitar and is making guitar straps, it’s just going to come out better in some weird, intangible way.

Where do you get the material for your straps?

We get it at automotive and upholstery shops, and automotive- and upholstery-supply distributors. There’s certain ones that are sourced out to the western United States that have old stuff. And I kind of know what to look for. I’ve learned enough now, after looking for years. I know what a Cadillac hardtop looks like and I know what new-stock, brand-new RKB rawhide looks like. It almost looks the same, but one’s 30 years old and one’s not, and one is almost worthless to the guy owning the shop and it’s totally worth a lot to someone buying a guitar strap that it’s from a vintage Cadillac.

Your straps are all vegan. Are you?

I’m a vegetarian, but half of what I eat is vegan. I’ve been a vegetarian all my life. I started being a vegetarian when I was 14. So not my whole life. But most of it.

You recently started using dead-stock vinyl to make belts and wallets, too. How did that come about?

You need a lot of a certain kind of vinyl to make a guitar strap. You need about 10 yards or more. And there isn’t much. But there was all this this vinyl that was like 2 yards or 5 yards that we could make into a couple hundred wallets that I had around and been collecting. Last August we got a 16-ton die cutter. … We were going into downtown L.A. to rent die cutters, but now we have our own die cutter, and we just got a silk screen set up just yesterday, and now we can completely make a wallet inside Couch and we can be way creative.

Most of your employees are in bands. Do you guys ever play shows together?

Yes, all our bands play shows together. I’m in the New Fidelity and California Lions. Matt Fry is in the Soft Hands. Reuben Kaiban [is] in the Commotions. Dustin Lovelis also, but Dustin no longer works with us because his band, the Fling, just got signed to Dangerbird Records and they are always on tour.

Your company is the total intersection between indie rock and indie craft!
There’s an absolute intersection. What’s cool about indie craft – and it’s crazy to me – it’s kind of exploded lately. But I think what people like about it, I think what crafters themselves like about indie craft, is the do-it-yourself idea. I can make something, and now there’s an audience. Someone will attend this craft show and someone will buy something from me off Etsy, and I have a direct connection with them. It’s a lot like when I write a song and play a show, and someone’s going to go to my show and they’re going to buy my CD and they’re going to be my friend. …

I think that’s really what the craft explosion is about. The age-old cutting out the middle man so you get to meet the person that makes your stuff. I think that’s pretty cool! It’s so much better to get something made with a little bit of joy.

Tube Necklace No. 2 by Etsy seller artbywinona, features both the neutral tone and the eco-minded supply trends that are predicted to be popular in 2011.

The craft world is a living, breathing, constantly changing and evolving organism, and there are definitely major trends that course through it’s veins. But my they are tricky. They’ll surface for months only to be stuffed to a storage closet’s backward depths after they’ve reached an arbitrary and unexpected expiration date. What dictates these enigmatic, yet powerful forces of economics and design? How can we predict them so our items are on the forefront of a rush, rather than ignored in online shops or stuffed behind a row of boots in a buyer’s closet?

The team at Craftster.org aims to answer those questions, or at least get a jump start on possible predictions, with a comprehensive run-down of all things trendy in 2011. Titled 2011 Indie Craft Trend Report, it was composed, according to the table of contents, “using anecdotal evidence from a community of 225,000 crafters, and analyzing data and trends from the collective 1.3 million visitors a month to the Craftster.org website.” Here’s some highlights from what the report has to say:

• The upcycling, green craft trend will continue to grow in 2011. Eco-minded supplies, such as naturally sourced woods and recycled metals, as well as found or reclaimable objects, like altoid tins, glass bottles, and old books will be popular crafting materials in 2011. Necklace no. 2, pictured above by Etsy seller artbywinona, is one such example of an item that incorporates eco- friendly materials, in this case metal tubing, to create a modern jewelry piece. The green trend will also have an impact on fashion, as many clothing oriented crafters will hit vintage shops for the reclaimed fabrics of sheets, curtains and apparel. Prepare to see old school fabric patterns making a comeback!
• The colors du jour will be natural and earthy tones, such as browns, greens and grays  as well as bright jewel hues like fuschia, deep red, plum, and teal. Think back to the basics with pops of colors for easy and contrasting palettes.
• Fashion. According to Craftser, the masses are screaming for shorter hemlines for the ladies, lots of layering, and for details, details, details on all pieces. Embellishments, pleasant finishes, and structural pleating will be lavishly and painstakingly constructed to make potential customers sit up and notice. Take note to the right of the A-grey marl mini skirt by Polish designer Arc Square, which mixes an earthy palette with lots of leg and an impressively complex, architectural pleating. As for the rest of fashion this year,  a mixture of 1940’s and 1970’s looks, which we’re already seeing now, will continue to be popular. Leggings will become a dress staple in 2011, possibly taking a wardrobe defining turn. Bolder prints, colors, and textures mean they will demand to dominate any outfit as a signature piece.
• For the jewelers out there, material imitations out of clay, fused plastic and resin will be the current take on baubles. Millefiore technique is also scheduled to make a comeback. Also, buyers are craving pretty and luxurious. Lavish, expensive looking designs will be remade in more economically friendly fashion this year, which is what the customer wants.
• All the fiber obsessed artisans take note: newer creative techniques, like stitching on mixed media, free form needlework, and vintage embroidery transfers means embroiderers will be bringing it this year. A mixed media embroidered diorama piece, Hello Old Friend by Etsy seller Mary’s Granddaughter, pictured to the left, offers one such example.  For the quilters, there will be a major increase in the use of creative embellishments. Also in the future, detailed, labor intensive art quilts will be very “hip” and intended to impress.
• Knitters and crocheters, on the other hand, will love soft acrylics, wool and natural yarns when churning out pieces on their double-ended crochet hooks in 2011. Cable knit items and amigurimi patterns will be in high demand year round.

That’s only the tip of the iceburg. For more to this report, such as trends in baking and cooking, handmade gifts, inspiring muses from pop culture, and the top 20 most visited websites by crafters, download the PDF of the full report here.

What do you think about these trends? Have you seen any of them already? And how about trend reports and forecasts in general? Do you find them helpful? Please comment below!

Name: Katie McClanahan
Shop: BlackStar Jewelry Company
Website: http://www.etsy.com/shop/BlackStar
Blog: http://blackstarjewelry.blogspot.com/
Location: middle Tennessee

What do you make, and how are your products environmentally-friendly?
I make jewelry, mostly comprised of vintage elements and thrifted finds.  These bits and pieces are already here, waiting to be used, so why not use them?

Why did you start making earth-friendly goods?
I’ve always been drawn to the past and all things vintage. I started using some of the vintage beads that I’ve been collecting in my designs a while back.  Family, friends and clients started sending me vintage jewelry because they knew how much I loved it. Little by little, those pieces of history crept into my work.

What is your favorite material to work with? Why?
My favorite material to work with is vintage glass. The colors were so pure back then. Plus, I love the imperfections that you find in many of the beads.

What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever made? Why?

Hard one. I’ve been making jewelry for 20 years. I’ll pick a current favorite from my shop. I adore antique skeleton keys and I love the beach. I’m a land-locked beach bum and many of my pieces are designed with the coast in mind, so I’ll pick this:

Give us a link to one of your favorite resources for running your business:
I’d have to pick the Storque, Etsy’s blog. It has information that is pertinent to where I’m selling my work. There are other blogs that I read, but the Storque is the only one that I read every day.

What’s your #1 tip for living greener?
Grow your own, if you can. Or support your local farmer’s market.

What’s your #1 tip for crafting greener?
Do what you love and then find a way to do it by making a lighter footprint. There are so many alternatives out there right now

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
Beam me up Scotty. It’d be a quick way to get to the beach.
P.S. LOL! I just read Sara’s interview after I filled this in and saw her last answer. Guess I’m not the only one that would love to beam around.

Biology Today, 1972

I know you’re expecting me to write something about Mother’s Day gifts, being that it is only a few days away here in the US. I thought about it, but I’m quite sure you’re all set with lovely things for her.  Instead, I offer you some sources for inspiration.

(helpful tip: fresh flowers and heartfelt sentimental compliments are much appreciated by most mothers)

Biology Today, 1972

The above two photos are part of a collection of textbook art from the  blog A Journey Around My Skull which showcases an exquisite collection of amazing illustrations from vintage books.

Will, who writes the blog is a self-professed “reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature.”

(many thanks to Shaving Kit for the link)

If you are a fan of all things mid-century modern then you probably also love the design genius of Charley Harper.  Above is an excerpt from the Giant Golden Book of Biology.

(via Grain Edit)

Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) 1926

Fritz Kahn was a medical doctor who wrote and illustrated (along with other artists) a series of medical textbooks with these amazing images.

(via The Curious Squid)

In a very loose way this has been a post about Mother’s Day.  Textbooks are flawed just like people but they do serve as a source of information and sometimes inspiration.   One of the great gifts a good mother gives her child is an education.  Simple seemingly mundane repetitive guidance such as help learning to walk, how to tie a shoe, how to pronounce words are just the beginning of a mothers job as educator.

The journey a mother takes in raising a child is just as much a transformation and discovery as the child’s own journey.  Motherhood is miraculous and horrifying both biologically and emotionally.

Give mom love this Mothers Day for all the small and large sacrifices she has made for you.