CamdenJam 2016 - Button Making Event

I partnered up with Connect The Lots in Camden again this weekend, this time instead of painting, I brought my trusty pinback button press to the city to teach kids how to make their own buttons at Camden Jam! It was a HUGE hit. 

First the children colored their designs, then we punched them out,
and they used the press (supervised) to create their finished button!

Since the event was at city hall, which is a Poke-stop, my contact requested that I make some Pokemon-themed designs. I took my Pokemon Go team buttons and turned them into simple black and white outlines, this way kids could color them in, as well as a generic Pokeball and a Pikachu design. (You can't leave out Pikachu!) Surprisingly, the biggest hit of the day was the paper I left blank! 

300 BUTTONS DONE!

Finished 300 Pokemon Go buttons last night for a custom order!! I'm counting this as my workout for the day. 👍 ▪ ▪ ▪ #pokemongo #etsy #customorder #buttons #teamvalor #teaminstinct #teammystic #mystic #valor #instinct

A photo posted by M. Smith (@poison_and_antidote) on Jul 28, 2016 at 7:51am PDT

Man, that was the biggest order I've ever filled and it only took me 2 days to finish it! (One for printing & cutting, and another for punching/production.) Not bad, not bad at all. Plus I'm counting it as an arm workout. Win-win!

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Pokemon GO - Awesome For Small Businesses

The game is here and it's having a much stronger effect than I had ever imagined. People are going outside, they're walking and exploring their neighborhoods, they're meeting new people, and small businesses are getting more foot traffic and sales thanks to being gyms and Pokestops. This is just...all around awesome. Sure there are a few naysayers and killjoys sprinkled in the mix with their negative articles, but overall, I think the positive benefits outweigh the few negative click-bait headlines.

I've only played up until Silver and Gold on the GameBoy Color (Silver was my last "new" Pokemon game), but my younger sister still plays and she keeps me hip to all the new Poke-happenings out there in the world. I know a lot of online shop owners JUMPED at the opportunity to make a buck off the trend, but with the market being so saturated...I figured I'd skip this one...but then the custom requests started rolling in....