Compulsively Making

[pen_grunt]

Once upon a time, as I was sculpting a Play-Doh forest--one of many over the years--during a conference call, my co-worker called me "irrepressibly creative". I'm always doodling or sculpting or making something. 

I'm not a good drawer/painter, generally, but I tend to be able to carve out little artsy-craftsy niches and once I find a thing I like, I like to refine it, do a lot of it, and drive my interest into the ground. 

When I do a thing, I really like to exhaust it, y'know?
Might as well, I'm already in that mode. The supplies are already there.

Hence all the felt. 

I procured my Grandpa's old 2 1/4 inch button maker (nothing fancy, just a hand-press) and I already had stacks of my grandma's old magazines from the 60s. 

So my latest project has been button making with vintage images and phrases. Part of the challenge is finding the phrases within the old magazines. I think I'd be easier to just make up my own and print them out, but it's not as fun. So it's become a Thing. 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10110009702937010.1073741836.13953311&type=1&l=dc180a867c

I didn't post some of the saucier ones in there. There is a lot of innuendo. I haven't exhausted my interest yet, so on I go. I don't have any use for dozens and dozens of buttons, but I'll probably keep a few and then sell the rest on etsy (how much would one charge? $3?) or trade them for other peoples' quirky art-adjacent stuff, or even just give them away to friends who want them. 

It's so weird. I don't know why I do this kind of thing. It seems oddly obsessive. In a way it feels very much like these Things, these various Projects, are a way of meditating or balancing out my mental health. I don't know that that's far off. 

Comments

[cactus_rs]

omg hi hello these are fantastic and i have so many friends here who would LOVE them, please put them up on Etsy!! i would also love them but i feel like i should stick with the less saucy ones considering how often i work with kids (and how my purse doubles as like my desk/cart, it's not like i leave it in the coat room or something).

[pen_grunt]

Thank you!

Professional opinion: If I were to put these on Etsy, how much do you think I should charge for them?

Unprofessional opinion:

[cactus_rs]

A living wage per hour/time it takes to craft + supplies + $1 to cover Etsy fees + $X to cover the time it takes to photograph and list supplies (X varies per person).

I still manage to sell my stuff at roughly this price point and while I'm not sending my jewelry out into the world at record-breaking speed, it doesn't seem to deter anyone from buying.

People don't value pins and magnets to highly, so you'll struggle with that (as opposed to jewelry, which people will premium for). You might want to swing towards pendants instead so you can get that jewelry/luxury markup. But I would be willing to drop up to $5 and shipping for a cool pin from a rad indie maker, no questions asked. Maybe up to $7 or $10 if it was a gift for someone else or if it turned out that had to be the price point for a living wage. I don't know; I don't have a button maker nor do I do decoupage type stuff so I don't know what what the time investment is on that kind of work.

Re: Unprofessional opinion:

[pen_grunt]

That's really helpful, and I very much agree that pins/magnets aren't as valuable as something like jewelry--so I'm unlikely to get any sort of premium price.

I was initially thinking $3 (and shipping in the U.S. is ~2.50), but I think I might do $4 and see if they sell at that point.

The real time investment is from sourcing the materials...it takes maybe 1-1.5 hours to go through a magazine with enough attention to get the phrases and pictures, then cut everything out. . . but it's hard to judge how much time an individual button truly takes to make.

(BTW: What is your etsy shop name?)

Re: Unprofessional opinion:

[cactus_rs]

Kokoba. I'm here for all of your STEM-themed jewelry needs. ;)

With items like that have a lot of background work involved that just gets divvied up into a lot of pieces, I would either

1) write off those hours you spend going through magazines as a "hobby" hour and not attempt to monetize it and *only* focus on the time it takes you to assemble a piece with the materials once you have them

or

2) pay super close attention for maybe 1 to 3 magazines to see how long it actually takes to get the phrases/pictures (if you're not sure on that 1 to 1.5 hour estimate) and to note an average of how many buttons you get per magazine. So if it takes 90 minutes to go through a magazine and you end up with 10 buttons, then you can tack on 9 minutes to the individual times for certain designs. Since I imagine it's trivial to track how long it takes you to put together a design from the material you've sourced.

[zestfive]

Hmm...it seems that you might have gone to the same high school as I did...

[pen_grunt]

Really?! :o

That's a small town/s, it'd be a big coincidence!

[zestfive]

I clicked on your pictures of your buttons and see that we have three common FB folks. The Rocket one, an english teacher that I never had but my sister did, very dry sense of humor. I had Ms. Osborne.

I don't know about you, I didn't care for it because there was the church crowd or the bar crowd and I really didn't fit in either.

[pen_grunt]

I felt much the same way about it. So much so that I left two years early for PSEO. It was...stifling in many, many ways.

I had Ms. Osborne, too, then Ms. Bous the year after. I liked them both a lot.

[zestfive]

yes, I was PSEO too for my senior year and graduated 1987. I had Mr. Schroeder and he wasn't always a nice man.

[newlifeinstpaul.livejournal.com]

Now THAT'S some hilarious shit.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

I didn't even post the naughty(er) ones! :D

[bertine.livejournal.com]

Recently I realized I obsessively leave how to do things. It isn't the end result that matters, I want to understand how things are constructed.

So I get this.

[pen-grunt.livejournal.com]

This is how one gets all the new projects. I understand 100%.