#PortlandButtonWorks

[spiralhouseshop]

🎉 Portland Button Works is officially a teenager — we’re turning 13! 🎉

It all started on May 20, 2012, when we opened our little button shop on North Killingsworth in North Portland. Alex had been making pinback buttons since 2000, but this was a brand new adventure: a storefront workshop where folks could pick up custom orders — plus shelves of zines (Alex’s other passion) to browse!

A few years later, we moved into a secure warehouse on Interstate and continued to grow our shop and catalog. When the pandemic hit, we pivoted — moving our operation into our home (conveniently zoned residential/commercial) and shifting our focus more toward books and zines. That shift kept us afloat until people were able to gather again — and once again needed buttons!

Over the years, we’ve evolved — including rebranding our catalog of books, zines, and pre-made button designs as Spiral House. But at our core, we’re still here doing what we love: making buttons, sharing zines, and being part of this amazing community — whether it’s through the mail or in person at one of the many events we vend throughout the year.

💖 Thank you for 13 lucky years of support! Here’s to many more. 🎁 As our birthday gift to you: enjoy 13% off this week with code : BIRTHDAY13

The code is good for EVERYTHING in our catalog from custom items to zines, books, and more!

[portlandbuttonworks]

Embrace the new year with a burst of creative flair!

Portland Button Works is excited to present a special offer of 20% off on custom pin-back buttons, available from now through February. Simply use the code: NEWYEAR at checkout to infuse your style with a personalized touch.

Whether you're looking for a single button to commemorate an inside joke with a friend or need hundreds for your band, artwork, club, cause, or organization, we've got you covered.

We make buttons in 4 sizes: 1", 1.25", 2.25", and 3.5". Our parts are made in America, and the buttons are crafted right here in Portland, Oregon. Choose pickup in Portland, Oregon or worldwide shipping for your convenience.

[helluva-world-innit]

With all the creatives in the fandom/hatedom, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't teach you a lil somethin:

Zines.

Zines are self-published magazines that you can make about anything.

Let me say that again:

You can make zines about ANYTHING.

Art

Music

Food

Your cat

REVOLUTION

Girls kissing

ANYTHING

If you don't believe me, just look at what's out there so far:

upthewitchypunx alex has so many resources about zines:

Now go

[thegodwhocums]

will post an update later but the Tiny Free Library of Magical Objects goes live SOON and I am STOCKING IT with ITEMS

some are going to be items i make

little rocks painted with sigils

stickes wrapped and whittled into little wands

decorated natural objects of many kinds

bundles of herbs

little jeweleries and doodads

and also ZINES (several from @portlandbuttonworks, placing order this evening I hope)

if YOU have made a zine that belongs in this weird box, please let me know - I am stocking it out of the money I'm being paid for the project but will put SOME funds towards obtaining zines and tchotchkes

also if it simply pleases you to put a little doodad into a tiny free library of magical objects curated by a fellow magician, you can drop it in the mail, DM me for the PO box <3

[upthewitchypunx]

Felt like my career obligation as the owner of @portlandbuttonworks to purchase these pin-back buttons USPS stamps. No one told me how clever the back of the sheet was!

[alexwrekk]

It's here! Happy International Zine Month!

Flyer design this year by Jordan Ducree, a graphic designer and web technician in Portland, Oregon. Text inspired by the continued celebration of IZM set forth by @alexwrekk and other contributors since 2009, updated in 2024 by Novie Nimble and Joshua James Amberson of @antiquatedfuture

If you're in Portland, you can pick copies of the flyer up (for yourself or to distribute) at Grover's Curiosity Shop.

Available to download and print from here.

Also available for free from @spiralhouseshop @portlandbuttonworks

[upthewitchypunx]

So many people stealing Chronographia's idea in so many different ways these days. We've made the custom buttons for this arts at @portlandbuttonworks for about a decade so I know where it came from.

Linocut print by Pamela Leavey

[spiralhouseshop]

New in The Spiral House at @portlandbuttonworks Agust 13, 2024!

Cartomancy in Folk Witchcraft: Playing Cards and Marseilles Tarot in Divination, Magic, & Lore by Roger J. Horne

Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic by Tabitha Stanmore

Lessons From The Empress :A Tarot Workbook for Self-Care & Creative Growth by Casandra Snow and Siri Vincent Plouff

Green Witch's Oracle Deck by Arin Murphy- Hiscock and Sara Richard

Rainbow Magick: Twelve Creative Color Quests For Art Witches by Molly Roberts

Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy by Christopher Marmolejo

The Spell of the Sensuous: perception and Language in a More Than Human World by David Abram

Tarot Card Sticker Book (perfect for tarot journaling)

[lemonbalmgirl]

Ah!

For buttons, I use Portland Button Works. (@portlandbuttonworks) I am admittedly biased, since the business is run by a good friend, but they do quality work and have been making buttons for 20+ years. And supporting small, women-owned businesses is rad.

Trying to find the fucks to get done the shit that I need to this week, especially since I'm doing another event on Sunday. The weekend was really successful in derailing my brain, though.

To-do list:

Mon: physical therapy appt

Tues: plasma

Wed: counseling

Thurs: plasma, take stuff to booth-partner's house

Finish correcting inventory after last event

Take photos of new inventory to finally put online

Get art ready to be sticker designs

Order stickers

Electroform more stuff?

Finish pentacle rainbow bunting?

Catch up with bookkeeping

Clean kitchen, dear god

Clean room, dear god

Laundry, so much laundry

[celestial-jane]

Got my order from @upthewitchypunx today! Very excited to start digging in.

Thanks, darlin! ✨

[ashinthesky]

Starting in witchery as a framework to help process trauma

A couple of weeks ago, I started reading Brainscan 33 by Alex W. of Portland Button Works (@upthewitchypunx). Between that and exposure to lots of witchy readings and podcasts from my fiance and significant reflection on my spiritual past, I decided to go ahead and start down a witchcraft path. I’ve not read all of the zine yet, and I am very confident in my need for significant amounts of research. But I’m starting out in the secular part of witchcraft. I have a hunch that this will fit best and while that may shift, my hunches and intuition are usually pointed in the right direction.

The part of Brainscan 33 that I have been focusing on is the idea of altars as a (and this is my personal, generalized, working definition) ‘space and/or collection of things that is imbued with special meaning and reminds the creator of who they are as a person.’

If we assume this is a reasonable definition, and I apply it to my life, then I come to the following conclusions: The staircase walls where my mother hangs senior portraits of myself and my siblings is an altar. The other staircase wall where she hangs pictures of all sorts of things from her life is an altar. My bag of programs from concerts that I played while in undergrad (and the Spotify playlist that will come from it) is an altar. The box of cards and letters from friends and family is an altar. None of these are very formalized as altars or necessarily dedicated as such, but they are - by that working definition - altars in function if not exactly in form. || sidebar: I’ll probably explore musical practice as ritual someday -- it’s something I used to do but haven’t done in two years Now on to the part where I take this and shift toward the “witchcraft as the beginnings of part of a framework to help me process trauma” bit. From Sept 2017 to May 2019, I was a graduate student hired as an RA/TA (research assistant/teaching assistant) in a material science department. Currently, I mentally associate that whole time with trauma and have for some time been repressing that entire period of my life. 

Truth is that there were lots of really great things that happened and that I did while at that university. I was a scientist, teacher, a musician, and a queer mentor. I instigated justice and inclusion changes at the departmental level by just being me. I learned some really frickin cool stuff, and I made some pretty significant progress in the science portion of my work even though my heart wasn’t really in it.  

If I peel back the layers, the part of my existence that caused trauma was being pressured by a toxic graduate school culture to work more than was appropriate without any structure for how the work should look or how to pivot and adapt when things, inevitably, go wrong.

How does this relate to witchcraft? It wasn’t until I decided - this week - to make an ‘altar’ of things from my time at that university that I remembered all the good things that came out of that time. I spent about 20 minutes after therapy collecting trinkets from that part of grad school and putting them in one place. About half the items were something I had positive associations with but had forgotten about. By the time I had the whole pile together, it was a proper “pile of good things and bad things.”

My next step is to build a formalized altar (which won’t look anything like a “traditional” altar, it might literally be a box with trinkets and notes in it so maybe the better word will be “memory box”) and do some journaling in the lab notebook I’m going to use as a ‘book of shadows’ (quotes because I’m not sure what language I want to use yet) to really work through what these items mean to me and what that time meant to me.

I’ll challenge myself to be radically honest with myself and ask questions like:

Why did I keep this trinket? What does it mean to me?

Does it have primarily positive or negative associations with it? Why?

What stories do I have about this item?

And by telling these stories, I’ll discover more of the whole truth of the situation and I’ll be able to start seeing that period of time not as a monolithic ~bad time~ of my life but as the nuanced, complicated time of change that it was. 

There’s gonna be lots of crying involved. 

[voidandlight]

Got my package from @portlandbuttonworks​ the package got here super fact and I'm excited to read through these and buy some more.

[upthewitchypunx]

This is the absolute worst event we have ever vended at. We were at another event put on by the same people that was not very well attended, but this one is worse. They put out an email saying they got feedback about advertising and we're going to do a better job with it this time.

Apparently they advertised on the radio? Who even listened to the radio besides me in my kitchen cooking to NPR or occasionally the awesome indie radio station here in Portland.

A booth neighbor overheard a person in the 20s offer to help do online advertising with insta and tiktok and the organizer turned it down and said they have it covered.

It's been 4 hours and we haven't even made our booth fee back. There's more vendors than attendees that have come in all day.

So, if you were thinking of picking up some zines, books, or witchy things from @spiralhouseshop or checking out our catalog of burton designs or even getting some custom buttons made at @portlandbuttonworks now would be a really nice time to do that.

[breelandwalker]

Got my order from @portlandbuttonworks for the Witch's Market. They all look great, and I'm psyched to share them with everyone in October! #ThisWitchHexesFascists Feel free to tell me which ones you want! . . . #witchythings #witchsmarket #portlandbuttonworks #witchcraft https://www.instagram.com/p/B0q_6KjnlYj/?igshid=1mnin066op0uw

[portlandbuttonworks]

We've de ided to keep this instagram more focused on buttons and move the zines, books, other distro and catalog related stuff over to @pbwzinedistro just to keep the two things tidy. Feel free to follow over there if you are into that! #portlandbuttonworks #pbwzinedistro #zinestersofinstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/B4IKQauhOcx/?igshid=1jwiujlmde6rq

[alexwrekk]

The view from my desk at @portlandbuttonworks some days more than others I'd rather crawl into the zine fort and read zines rather than make buttons. Today is one of those days. It's been raining on and off and our windows are open to hear and smell it. I can hear drops in the metal roof outside our shop window. I'm am not excited about the heat next week. I want it to stay 60 and cloudy as it should until July 4th. #portland #zines #portlandbuttonworks #portlandrain https://www.instagram.com/p/BybM9SPBxi_/?igshid=usg49gczly07