Enter to Win! Kitty Wigs + Busy Beaver

Have you entered the Kitty Wigs + Busy Beaver giveaway? You should! By using coupon code KittyWigs2011, you will receive 10% off your Busy Beaver Button Co. button order AND be automatically entered to win. Check out the cool custom buttons customers have made using the KittyWigs2011 code:

Kitty Wigs + Busy Beaver have elevated Ramen noodles to high art…

…helped raise money for Japan…

…and partied with Steve glow-in-the-dark style at his 50th birthday. How will you use the Kitty Wigs + Busy Beaver promo?

Click here for details on how you can enter to win. Shop now at busybeaver.net for custom buttons.

10% Off Glow in the Dark Buttons!

Who has two thumbs and loves glow-in-the-dark buttons? This beaver!

We’re celebrating our love of the glow by offering customers 10% off any order containing glow-in-the-dark buttons. Round, oval, square— this deal applies to all glow-in-the-dark sizes and shapes! Just enter the code “Glow2011″ at checkout when you order from Busy Beaver Button Co.

Limit one use per customer. Coupon code valid only from February 17, 2011 – March 17, 2011.

Kickstarter Kicks Buttons Up a Notch

Only known glow-in-the-dark, one-inch, gold-plated buttons made custom for Kickstarter.com

What is precious, wearable, and glows in the dark?  These amazing one-inch, glow-in-the-dark, 24-karat gold buttons conceptualized by Kickstarter.com and produced by Busy Beaver Button Co.

Kickstarter.com is funding tool for creative projects that spans film, food, gaming, dance, art, and more.  Kickstarter.com allows you to set a goal for the financial amount you need to make a project happen, and invites supporters to pledge toward your cause.

You create progressive incentives for higher levels of giving, like a copy of your successfully-funded movie’s DVD for a $25 pledge, or VIP tickets to opening night for a $100 pledge.

Kickstarter.com founder Charles Adler used the tool to fund a project that improves the presentation of data on his website with the aid of “infographics maestro” Nicholas Felton, of the famed Feltron Annual Report and Daytum.

And guess what?  The Feltron vs Kickstarter surpassed their financial goal to raise $3,000 and accumulated $3,222 to get Felton on board!

Now those who donated more than $20 receive one-of-a-kind, one-inch buttons designed by Felton himself.  Buttons show a Venn diagram linking two glow-in-the-dark circles with a 24 kt gold circle.  Charge it up under a bright light and impress your friends for a half hour!

Creating a unique button like this started eleven months ago with two failed steel rule die attempts, 200 gold-plated button parts, glow-in-the-dark materials, and one awesome 1/2-inch paper drill bit that makes Kickstarter.com more fun, exciting and intuitive; and “not to mention sexy as hell.”

Visit Kickstarter.com here to discover new projects that you can support!  Share your over-the-top ideas and projects with Busy Beaver here.

Almost There Buttons Up

"Almost There" one-inch buttons printed in glow in the dark, and full color.

Opening this weekend at Intuit, the The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in Chicago, is an exhibit featuring the work of Peter Anton, a 78 year-old resident of East Chicago, Indiana.

He, “creates paintings that illuminate moments of significance from his personal history based on photographs he has obsessively compiled into a massive autobiography titled “Almost There.”

Co-curators Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden discovered Peter creating portraits during a visit to Pierogi Fest, and spent the past four years documenting Peter’s environment and day-to-day life of creating art under brutal conditions.”

Featured are custom one-inch buttons printed glow-in-the-dark and full color celebrating the works for the art opening.  Here’s your chance to experience the art for yourself!

Click here for more info about the artist.  Click here for Busy Beaver Button Co.

Five Buttoned-Up Album Covers

Look closely, and you’ll see buttons all over album covers.  Here are five brought to you by Busy Beaver Button Co.

5.  Thee Makeout Party

How many dudes wearing buttons can you fit on a record cover?  Thee Makeout Party toured with fellow button head Nobunny, and you can grab their new album on Burger Records.  Their Anaheim, California sound is like Mickey Mouse making out with the 1910 Fruitgum Company.

4.  The Who

The Who album art for a 1987 compilation features a Richard Evans painting with super-mod-buttons on Pete Townshend, and an enormous “ELVIS FOR EVERYONE” button on dead hero Keith Moon.  His badge is probably 4-inches in diameter, which is the second largest size in the industry.  The comp features “Bald Headed Woman” and a Jimmy Page guitar solo from when, “he owned the only fuzz box in the country at that time.”  Click for Richard Evans‘ awesome website smattered with badges.

3.  BBQ

What yields greater joy than a big button on an album cover?  Tie Your Noose is Mark Sultan’s second solo album on BOMP! Records, and the record design features a 1-inch button pinned to a leather jacket.  There’s lots of Sultan buttons to be collected from his other Montreal groups like King Khan & BBQ, Les Sexareenos, and Mind Controls.  The BBQ website even uses buttons as the menu bar!

2.  Submarine Races

What do Jeffrey Lee Pierce from Gun Club and In the Red Records rocker Ian Adams from Submarine Races have in common?  A single Hank Williams button.

Theresa K. took this great Pierce photo thirty years ago, and her shots of the LA punk scene include Stiv Bators, the Ramones, and Blondie in her Punk Turns 30 photo gallery.  This Submarine Races cover came along decades later, and features Ian Adams also of The Ponys and Happy Supply wearing the same exact Hank button design.  Check out the jumbo glow-in-the-dark 2.25-inch button from Adam’s new band, Maximum Wage on MySpace.

1.  GG Allin

A mysterious element featured on the iconic GG Allin record cover “Always Was, Is, And Always Shall Be” is a Brian Jones 1.5-inch pin.  Is it a mini-porthole into his soul, or a wearable crystal ball into his future?  We may never know.

Honorable Mention  The MC5

The insert for Kick Out Jams by the MC5 is a button hall of famer where the White Panthers wear their hearts in the form of badges on their bare chests.  Buttons have been a “well-rounded” way to show dissent since the 1800s, to the 1960s, to present day (more here).  Pin out the jams, brothers and sisters.

<<Back to Busy Beaver Button Co.

Swell Season tours Button-O-matic

Custom Swell Season Button-O-matic goes on tour

Award-winning band The Swell Season is vending custom glow-in-the-dark, transparency, and full color buttons on tour with the Busy Beaver Button-O-matic.  You can collect them all, and win prizes like a Swell Season tote bag. Take photos to post on their MySpace.

You may be familiar with Swell Season from the Sundance Film Festival award-winning movie, Once.  Check them out at the beautiful and historic Auditorium Theater in Chicago, or click here for the nation-wide tour schedule.  Click here to see the Swell Season merchandise line.

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Scary BOOton Winners Announcement

Oh my gourd, it’s time to announce the Scary BOOton winners!  Cultural icon Svengoolie picked his favorite glow-in-the-dark buttons from amazing submissions, and said “..seriously, I like them all for different reasons!”

1st Place     Larry Keiser

design featured on BusyBeaver.net

autographed photo of Svengoolie

100 free glow-in-the-dark buttons

Busy Beaver Scary BOOton set

2nd Place   Llyn Hunter

100 free glow in the dark buttons

Busy Beaver Scary BOOton set

3rd Place    Adam Kovalcsik

Busy Beaver Scary BOOton set

Come celebrate Halloween with Busy Beaver on October 31 at the awesome novelty shop and Button-O-matic host, Uncle Fun.  We are selling “instant Halloween costumes” and making spooky buttons.  Click here for more info on the Busy Beaver Facebook.

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Busy Beaver Scary BOOton Contest

Svengoolie 30th Anniversary Buttons

Want your design on BusyBeaver.net for Halloween?  Make a glow-in-the-dark design for any size Busy Beaver Button and cultural icon Rich Koz aka Svengoolie will judge the Spookiest BOOton!

Prizes

-Your name and button design on BusyBeaver.net on Halloween

-100 custom Glow in the Dark buttons with your design

-Autographed Svengoolie 30th Anniversary Button Pack

Entry Rules

-One design entry per human by October 25, 2009

-Click here for helpful Design Setup Guidelines and Templates

-Submit via Busy Beaver Facebook or e-mail buttongal@busybeaver.net

Go to BusyBeaver.net

Buy Svengoolie Buttons

Bright ideas for buttons

Little Friends of Printmaking glow-in-the-dark buttons

Question

What do nightclubs and Halloween have in common?

Answer

They are both dark places where people wear buttons.

Busy Beaver is proud to announce that the glow-in-the-dark buttons are available in all shapes and sizes for an extra ten cents per button.  Just hold the button up to a bright light and watch it glow!  Click here to see the buttons at work.

Buttons glow brightly in the dark when "fully charged." Design by Jay Ryan.

Free Buttons for Obama Rally @ Grant Park

What do you do when an historic event takes place a few miles from your button company?  Pass out free buttons!

Busy Beaver Button Co. gave out glow in the dark buttons to illuminate the Obama Rally at Grant Park  on November 4, 2008.  Four hundred people were psyched to get these buttons commemorating Obama’s Victory Speech in downtown Chicago.

High spirits were contagious.  It was totally amazing and crazy and awesome.  Gobama!

Here’s a selection of photos the Victory Rally.  There’s even more on the Busy Beaver Button Co. Flickr.

Busy Beaver Button Co. designed and made the glow in the dark 2.25-inch Obama Victory Button.  Do you want one?  Buy it from the Busy Beaver Etsy Store.