Gold Buttons are back!

Customize the world's only 24 karat gold plated buttons at Busy Beaver Button Co.

The first reaction to 24 karat gold-plated buttons is pretty much, “Whoa.”

Busy Beaver Button Co. developed the world’s first and only customizable, precious metal one-inch buttons to project the perceived value of these wearable objects into the stratosphere.

Amazing organizations customize this advertising specialty to express their messages in innovative ways.

For instance, Warp Records ordered the first run for their label’s New York anniversary party. 

KnifeFight launched an entire gold-plated button line with rad designs at an opening event.

And of course, Busy Beaver Button Co. distributed thousands of CURRENCY art buttons in Button-O-matic vending machines locations across the country.

Here’s your chance to partake in the next pressing of gold buttons!  Click here for prices, starting at $52 for 50 gold-plated buttons with free ground shipping.

KnifeFight custom, one-inch 24k gold-plated buttons are super awesome.

Click here to start your order, when you’re ready!  Also, send photos of your buttons for a feature to buttons@busybeaver.net

The Spits Button Up

The Spits are notorious for their lyrics, costumes, and band merch that includes vinyl records, re-branded dollar store finds, and BUTTONS!

Their new full length is available on In the Red Records, and the album art is on the 1.5-inch square buttons they sell on tour.  Busy Beaver even ships reorders on the road when buttons sell out.

Check out the Spits with Nobunny on July 21 in San Francisco, and click here for the Spits on MySpace.

Click here for the company that makes the Spits and Nobunny buttons.

The Spits make square 1.5-inch buttons with their album art

Hamper McBee Buttons Up

Hamper McKee Button on Drag City

Go ahead and Google, “Hamper McBee.”

You’ll see this button and The Good Old-Fashioned Way album for sale on the Drag City website, some recipes for moonshine, along with spoken-word videos online.

If you’re looking for his SonicBids page or Twitter, you’re out of luck.

The late Hamper McBee was a, “moonshiner, carnival barker, and ballad singer of legendary proportions.”  His, “prodigious talent and personality won him admirers not only in his native Smoky Mountains but throughout the folk music world, where his wholly unique approach told-time ballads and lyric songs struck like revelations,” according to VentVox.

“In 1978, Director Harmony Korine’s father Sol Korine shot a film about Hamper called Raw Mash. Sol spent six months in the Tennessee mountains with Hamper McBee and says that McBee drank 24 cans of beer a day and never got drunk.”  Click here for the full article.

A classy button for a classic guy!

Click here for the Hamper McBee button souvenir from Drag City.  Click here for the button company that makes them.

Summer Sessions on the Square Buttons Up

Summer Sessions on the Square provides music, entertainment, and buttons

Summer Sessions on the Square is kicking off its second year of live music tomorrow at the Centennial Statue, Saturday June 26 in Logan Square.

Busy Beaver Button Co. is excited to sponsor the monthly, local event again by making buttons for people on the spot from 5:30 to 8:30 in the evening.  Join us to create your custom 2.25-inch souvenir button for just a buck and check out the Summer Sessions on the Square shwag too.

Daily Candy recommends the concert series featuring, “blues, Afrobeat, rock, jazz, and more.”  And why?  “The Busy Beaver button-making station adds flair.”

Totally!  Click here for more info about Summer Sessions on the Square.  Order buttons for your next summer event at Busy Beaver Button Co.

Ben Pirani from the Stone Lightening Band at Summer Sessions. Notice the "BEN" button!

Strangelight DIY Fair Buttons Up

Strangelight features vendors and a Busy Beaver Button-O-matic

Join the DIY storefront Strangelight on Saturday, June 26 for a fair featuring more than forty Chicago record labels, zines, crafters, and one local button company.

Local musicians Matt Harmon and his brother John from band Cloud Mouth organize shows and cool events like this fair at Strangelight.  Each vendor chooses a non-profit to donate a percentage of profit to, and Busy Beaver Button Co. is contributing proceeds from the Button-O-matic to the Chicago Zine Fest.

It’s free from 1 to 5PM, and right next door to the Congress Theater on 2123 N Milwaukee in Chicago.  Click here to read the Chicago Reader feature about Strangelight!  And click here for the official Facebook invite.  As always, click here to visit Busy Beaver Button Co. to order buttons for your next event.

Fugscreens Buttons Up

FugScreens custom 1-inch buttons with transparency on print scrap

FugScreens founder Zissou Tasseff-Elenkoff approached Busy Beaver Button Co. for an innovative way to unite printmaking and buttons.

See the results above— one-of-a-kind one-inch buttons using custom logos, printmaking scraps, and the trademark Busy Beaver Button Co. magic.

Buttons debut at a FugScreens poster event on Friday, June 25 along with artists Johnny Sampson, Ben Lyon, and more at 1735 N. Ashland Ave. in Chicago.

FugScreens Poster Exhibit Friday! Notice the beaver in the water tower in the upper left.

And if great art isn’t enough to get your attention, how about a FREE TEQUILA & WHISKEY TASTING by Koval Distillery Chicago?!

Be sure to get one of the limited edition FugScreen designs on the one-inch, 1.5-inch, and 2.25-inch art buttons, too.  Click here for more info about FugScreens!  As always, click here for Busy Beaver Button Co.

Thirty Meter Telescope Buttons Up

Thirty Meter Telescope 1.25-inch buttons by Sandbox Studios

Featured today are buttons for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Observatory, which is the most technically advanced telescope in the world with observational powers many times greater than any available today.

TMT is located in Mauna Kea Science Reserve near the top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.  The telescope’s primary mirror will be 30 meters (98 feet) in diameter and is represented here with full color 1.25-inch buttons designed by Sandbox Studio.  Check out the Sandbox Studio design portfolio here.

Read more about the Thirty Meter Telescope here. As always, visit Busy Beaver Button Co. here.

TMT buttons in action on a jean jacket, courtesy of Sandbox Studio

Stuart Bannocks Buttons Up Badges

Stuart Bannocks makes a badge a day. Here is, "No.330 Like (You like this.)"

Some people order 100 buttons, or even 10,000 buttons for their projects.  Stuart Bannocks makes 365 buttons…one for each day of the year.

He calls his project, “Badge a Day.”

You can see the resulting images from May 2009 to present (that’s 382 buttons today) in his blog here.  Badge content spans a spectrum of hand-illustrated, collage, found-object, and satirical.

Bannocks documents his creative process in a video you can watch here.

Pictured are 64 of the 382 buttons Stuart Bannocks made so far

Black Tambourine Buttons Up

Black Tambourine album out now on Slumberland Records features a button on the cover

What better way is there to express a band logo on a record cover than a one-inch button on a jean jacket?

Here you see the Black Tambourine album out on Slumberland.  It’s a release including all the early 1990s twee jams, plus six previously unreleased tracks in a unified collection here.

Black Tambourine absorbs shoegazer cues from Jesus and Mary Chain with the enormity of the Phil Spector wall of sound to create a dreamy resonance that influences contemporary east coast bands to this day, like the Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

Grab the reissue on vinyl here from Slumberland here, where you’ll notice the record cover is a matte finish and the button is shiny!  Who makes the Black Tambourine buttons?  Click here to find out.

Past and Present: Blackhawks Button Up

Blackhawks 1968 Button

Modern Blackhawks Logo

You may remember the Blackhawks celebratory blog post a couple weeks back.  Since then, button collector Joel Carter ordered a 1968 Chicago Blackhawks 3.5-inch button from eBay.

What happened next was pretty interesting.  Differences in the mid-century logo and modern Blackhawks became evident, as pictured above.  Notice detail in the feathers.  The color scheme.  And interestingly, one logo is frowning, and the other is smiling!

Buttons serve as souvenirs, and time capsules for visual information.  Imagine what your buttons will mean in 42 years…