This past weekend I picked up my first batch of bottle opener supplies and wanted to play. My husband and some friends recently started their own homebrew club, Emerald City Homebrewers and with the monthly meeting coming up it was the perfect time to practice.

They already had the logo designed for them so it was just up to me to put it in a button template and print…but black on white paper is boring for a bottle opener and I was out of all colored paper except an odd gold and silver pack I found at Goodwill. All the colors I put behind the logo seemed to cheapen it until I remembered that instead of printing colored graphics and protecting them with a sheet of mylar you can print directly onto transparencies and press them as both artwork and coating.

By printing on the transparency you let all the metal of button shell show through giving the buttons an industrial look and some high shine. Thanks to my husband’s quick thinking we printed with the logo mirrored so the ink is inside the plastic and not on top of it. Not shown are the keychain rings that can be attached through the holes on the back. My fingernails had already broken today so he added them later before taking them to his meeting.

If you’d like your own Emerald City Homebrewers bottle opener, well, you’ll just have to join the club.

A set of 6, these 1 inch magnets all come from large sheets of chiyogami or various maps and ephemera I’m rescuing around Seattle. I’ve only got chiyogami and marble paper up so far, but soon I hope to have a variety of stamp, dictionary and old catalog images in 1″ magnet form.

Click the magnet set link above to view and purchase via Etsy.

Of the 27 items I’ve kept in stock this year I really only sold 3 this past month, and only 2 were for Christmas.

I’ve sold a lot of deer mirrors. I have two styles one with a bird and one with a butterfly.

This dragonfly mirror has been a relative new addition but has seen some sales recently.

Even though it’s Christmas baby showers and gender reveal parties still need to happen so I found myself churning out a couple hundred of these 1″ pins this last month. I’m pretty sure all the orders went to gender reveal parties, and I hope everyone had fun with my little game of wearing the pin of your guess.

Soon I’m going to have some all new It’s a Boy, It’s a Girl, It’s a ??? buttons available, and instead of making people buy them in awkward 15 packs of only one type per pack they’ll also come in a mixed bag of 30 for easy buying. I’ve also had requests for custom buttons using the two possible names picked out by the couple so custom listings will be available too.

Just one of many new things I’ve got coming up in January. I’ve been collecting a variety of supplies all year and now it’s time to settle in and use them all up for hundreds of different cute objects.

The Red, White and Blue flower mirror is something I’m happy to finally post. It’s my current favorite fabric for it’s vintage 1930s feel. I picked it up from the Pacific Fabrics flat fold table and only got a quarter yard without an edge so I don’t know who designed the fabric. Even though it has a light off-white base I’ve chosen to not use a mylar coating to keep the charm of the pattern (unless requested of course!).

Here’s a view of the actual fabric and whole pattern, in a more yellow light:

I also added a blue version of my best seller:

The marigold version of this print has been popular, but I like the blue better, especially because the flipside of the print looks like a nice watercolor painting of flowers. It’s a thin quilting material so it will always come with a mylar coating.

I’ve also acquired three 1950s world atlases so I’ve been busy breaking the books down and making small buttons out of them. Working from back to front means I always get to deal with the Washington State maps first. Hopefully these will be up in a week or two.

I’m still trying to decide how to sell them, individually or in groups. I’m thinking one listing per state per size with a grid of available buttons. I’d have to update the grid frequently (fingers crossed) and account for how to charge for an upgrade to a magnet. Maybe they should just all be made as magnets.

I’m also currently anxiously awaiting a shipment of paper from Paper Mojo. I’ve never purchase chiyogami online, but they had a teal version of my favorite paper, a yellow cherry blossom print.

I also picked up a couple of Lokta patterns that I have no idea how to use. I wish they were fabric so I could put them on mirrors, but maybe they’ll make some nice special wrapping for an order.

And this filigree print was $2 at Daniel Smith so I picked up a couple sheets just to have some purple on hand. I don’t think I have any purple paper yet.

Purple is actually trouble for me. I was lucky to get as much purple in that picture as I did. I can’t seem to make my camera take pictures of purple items, so I don’t have many of them in my shop. The few I did get I think I took during a full moon, during the third week of a month with a comet flying by, it’s so rare for my E-PL1 to get purple.

My name is Courtney and I sell buttons, magnets and mirrors that I smash in my Tecre 1 inch and 2.25 inch button makers. I like to recycle maps and comic books for the magnets, and to use Japanese chiyogami and neat quilt prints to cover mirrors. This site will be used as a blog about button making, crafts, Etsy and the materials I use to create.