Buttons and Ribbons

Summer is the quiet time

No, scratch that. Summer is the quiet time for selling buttons and ribbons, as I'm spending most waking hours outside battling the wilderness and trying to coerce recalcitrant poultry into doing what they are told

A job that goes about as well as you might expect.

Been a  bit damp, this summer, though, so I did for once have time to play

New at PaperSpill are these mixed packs of ribbons and buttons

in rose

in spring leaf

and in winter red

Coming Soon

New toys!

I have been off for a while, planning and organising. Now The Boss is also self-employed, making Boutonnerie work properly is even more important. There has been a site revamp and some resorting. Still some work to do, but I'm getting there.

There is also a whole bundle of new stock coming in the next week. My Lovely Babysitter is arriving tonight to take care of Little Button for me for a couple of weeks so I shall be hard at work.

So...
Felt packs to accompany the felt squares
New vintage buttons
A whole new section for Embroidery
and a fair few haberdashery basics.

On top of all this, I've been making. My first experiments with polymer clay didn't work that well - they looked pretty but were simply not robust enough. The second days work went better:







They all still need sanding and finishing, a task not helped by Little Button being firmly convinced they are sweeties!

When the weather warms up, I can start prepping the alder and there may even be some fruit wood toggles coming too, once I get around to doing the pruning!

So, do come by and visit - I'm having so much fun with Boutonnerie! For now, I'm off to sort the stockroom and find somewhere for the Lovely Babysitter to sleep. As she, and the button, says, life is...

On the outside

There is more to life than buttons (shocking, but true!) and the other side of life is spent trying to make half an acre of brick rubble, mud and nettles actually grow something. Sometimes I win - sometimes I don't. Recently, the prizes have been going to the forces of chaos. Of course, the flood didn't help - hard to dig when under 9' of water - and the next year a very tiny Little Button didn't help much either. But this year, I'm determined to take gold!

This may be over-optimistic on my part. Certainly, it isn't looking promising! The main problem is that although we have a lovely amount of space here, the house itself was once part of the brickworks. Famous brickworks, historically important brickworks, but nevertheless, brickworks that dumped all the spoil and misfires all over the land that was one day to become my garden.

And so - where there should be earth, there is brick. What soil that is there is a deeply unpleasant mix of clay and brick chippings. And, at best guess, there is 60 tonnes of brick bits to move before I do more planting.





This patch is going to be an orchard. One day! I'm slowly digging out the bricks, pulling up the weeds and some day soon will cover the whole area with the contents of 5 compost heaps. We have saved some topsoil from other excavations and then the trees can go in. At present, they are down in the veggie plot, but it's too frosty, too damp and if they grow more than 6" they're going to shade out the neighbours greenhouse. I don't think I could live with myself if they did that!

I've already cut down the alder sprouts coming from the stump:


A lot of this will be saved for button making and toggle making. As they are quite young shoots, they have grown lovely and straight and really - there is nothing better than the colour of fresh-cut alder!

Kanji

As well as all the new goodies at Boutonnerie I've got a fair stock of vintage buttons for sale too at Overspill. A while back I bought in some from a friend and had a happy day or so sorting, cleaning and counting. Yes, I play with buttons and get paid - does life get any better?

Anyway, deep in amongst these buttons were some Civil Defence ones, some British Red Cross ones and a few others that dated the collection to somewhere around the 1940s - 1950's. And there was this one:



The back is Bakelite or some other form of early plastic, as is the symbol on the front. What with the Mr and his business I'm getting moderately familiar with oriental bits and pieces and my hunch said 'Japanese' as opposed to Chinese or Korean.

But that was as far as I got. Trying to play snap on Google with kanji is no my idea of fun and a bit of a waste of time. Last night, though, I got chatting with Cindy and she cast a bit more light on things.

Now, traditional Japanese clothing doesn't have buttons. Things are folded and tied, elaborately, and apart from clips and bone fastenings on some armour pieces, buttons aren't really a feature.

But it seems the kanji (Cindy agrees most likely Japanese) is kotobuki, derived from the characters for 'long life' and 'celebration' and as such may well have been part of some sort of gift. A pouch perhaps, containing something for a special birthday? Maybe it marked a coming-of-age date? Perhaps even good wishes at a birth?

I had planned to sell this on, but I have to say I'm getting intrigued by it now. What is it? Where did it come from and how on earth did it end up in England?
I'm also wondering what to do with it. The silk bags over at Etsy were, originally, inspired by some Japanese folded patchwork. There isn't any obvious link there (except in my own mind) and I've recently been using Japanese dyeing techniques to colour-match thread for an antiques restorer.

I'm sitting writing this in a room filled with obi, sageo, a yari, katana and tanto and every sort of sword fitting you could imagine (and some you possibly can't). And a statue of Fudo-myoo standing in the corner.

Thinking about it, maybe this one isn't for sale after all!

Help!

I have it. For the next 2 months I have a babysitter and I can't tell you what a relief it is. Or how much I'm managing to get done in those 2 hours a day!

Boutonnerie is almost fully stocked now with all the pieces I have to hand. There is a new Maker Page, I have a new trade account opened.

And I might even have time to blog!

Maker Page - Alison

I've been so caught up inbuying new buttons, commissioning new buttons, photographing new buttons etc, this poor blog hasn't had all the attention it need. Poor lonely blog.

And so here is the first of the Maker Pages. There are 4 more to come and with luck there will be many more in the future...


Alison of AliBaliJewellery

Alison makes handcrafted silver jewellery from her home studio in Edinburgh. I was delighted when she agreed to make a set of exclusive pure silver buttons for Boutonnerie.

In her own words...
I have a pretty serious day job and I started making silver jewellery as a means to de-stress at the end of a busy day.I've always been what you would describe as 'artistic', doing a short stint at art school in the early 90's. I make jewellery that I would like to wear. I love colour and texture and that comes through frequently in my designs. It was my love of texture which inspired me to use precious metal clay, you can achieve textures with this material that would be pretty impossible with traditional silver smithing.


Precious metal clay is worked with whilst wet. At this stage you roll it, imprint it, shape it, and work out any textures that are required. It is left to dry before being reworked and sanded.



It is then fired, using either a kiln or a torch. The fine silver particles in the clay bind together to form fine silver (99% pure) which can then be polished to the desired finish.





The finished pieces are all on the Silver Button Page.

Victory is mine!

The first of the Maker Pages is complete!

I still have a way to go, but each handmade listing will have a link to the Maker Page of the Maker, as well as a page of extra photos. Komposer is my friend.

http://boutonnerie.com/catalog/alison.html

The page is still fairly basic, there is soem tweaking and beautifying to be done, but having got over this first hurdle with only a couple of scrapes (no broken legs, no barked shins) I'm really feeling quite proud.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow...

It does seem, some days, as if this entire project is moving at a petty pace, but like a swan, while there may be calm serenity on the surface there is a great deal going on underneath.

Honest!

The commercial listings are almost finished bar some last-minute stocktaking to see how many of what I really have and this weekend we venture back into html.

I haven't done much coding for a long while and even past experience was pretty basic, so the next few days should be...interesting. If on Monday morning I am greyfaced, white haired and gibbering then you'll know the coding won!

Generally, I like using OSCommerce for Boutonnerie. It is easy to use from the back-end and it is a familiar format for those who I hope are my target market. True, I can't add frills, flash, bells and whistles but then, even if I could, I probably wouldn't. The one thing about this format that does irritate me is that each listing has only one photo.
So, as I'm moving on now to the handmade pieces, not only do I need to write a Maker Page for each person but each handmade listing is going to need another page of pics. I have elegant silver buttons, I have fabulous polymer clay buttons, I have sewing rolls and I have more buttons coming. Simply not possible to show them in all their glory with a single 100x80 photo.

And just as a sneak peak for what is coming next week:

Eye of the storm

Amidst the weeks chaos I did get a couple of straight hours to work on the site. Ribbons are now up, as are felt squares. The squares I scannned as we were having a typical Derbyshire spring day (wet, blutery, lights on in the house at midday) and I though I'd get more accurate colours.

Hm.

The colours are accurate. Better than the camera would have given...but...resizing and cropping has led to some odd effects. Essentially, any stray fibre - and felt is never completely one colour - has pixillated itself like nobodys business! Hence the colourwarp.

The plan (stop laughing at the back. I always have a Plan. Whether or not life conforms is another matter) is to get the commercial items finished this week. I have the first of the handmade buttons here (and being treasured), the first of the handmade sewing items. I have 3 different makers lined up to produce buttons in different materials - but I want to give them all sufficient limelight. I also need to give people sufficient time to make.

So, once the commercial items are listed then we start on the handmades and the Maker Pages. If you are making for me, be assured I will be in touch soon asking all sorts of inconvenient questions!

On the plus side

We are now indexed by google, we have the sitemaps sorted, the handmade sewing rolls are here and are perfect! The plan is to fill them up - needles, pins, thimble, tapemeasure etc as they would be a real treat for a new seamstress or as a gift. They are wonderfully well made and really beautiful.

Also by the same post came the first of the handmade buttons. The photos I saw of them before they arrived were amazing, but now they are here, I don't want to let them go! They will be the most expensive buttons on the site, but at handcrafted, pure silver...they are worth every penny!

And today I have contacted 2 new makers both of whom I'm delighted to say are happy to help stock www.Boutonnerie.com We are still working out the details but I'm happy to know that there are more good things on the way to the shop and that Boutonnerie is making a start in helping artisans increase their business!

Wholesaling Handmade Buttons

Is actually turning out to be harder than I thought it would be!

Part of the problem, I think, is that many sellers are already pricing their handmade items at wholesale prices. As well as selling commercially made items, I do actually sell handmades. Sometimes. I see a lot of people get confused about pricing, but really, it is easy.

Cost of materials + your hourly wage/overheads x time taken + % profit = wholesale
Wholesale price x N = retail, N being the markup. I double it, but everyone has their own preference. For those making small, repeatable items, you can scale up depending on order size.

Really. Not that hard.

The point about selling wholesale is that the person buying large quantities is going to be doing a lot of the work for you. They're not trying to get rich off the fruits of your labour. Really. They will have a shop to maintain, or a website to host. They need to promote, store, package and post your items. They will need to advertise. Not on free PW blogs that have a handful of readers, but targetted advertising that will bring in lots of customers. And, with all of this, they still need to have their business profitable in order to support the artisans who supply the store, increase product range and pay the bills.

Granted, not everyone is trying to run a business. For some it is a hobby, a fun pastime that brings in a bit of money. Fine. But wouldn't it be nice to actually make a bit of money?

Try pricing for retail. You might even end up selling more.

I should know better

...than to suggest, in public, a timescale on anything!
However, despite delays, setbacks, mishaps and near-disasters, the first few of the clay buttons are done.

This is not the best photograph in the world! They are still on their backing paper (baking parchment - brilliant stuff!) and are still in need of a second coat of varnish. But, we are getting there.

And also on the theme of getting there... http://www.boutonnerie.com/ is now live and working. There is still a great deal of work to be done on the commercial stock, but very soon the first artisan-made buttons will be here to be listed!

Making buttons

Last week was the first foray into actually making. I had, as usual, a head full of ideas but I've found that this alone is not enough to guarantee success. Usually, it leads to frustration and disappointment as the world fails to conform to my plans. (The small person has the same problem. But she is allowed to bellow when things go wrong. Apparently, I'm not).

Anyway, having been dissuaded from getting kiln (bah! what d'ye mean, we've nowhere to put it?) I reckoned I've give some airdry clays a go. Supposedly they dry rock-hard. Hmm. Am I too cynical when I immediately spot this phrase as a potential for disaster?

So, I squished and squeezed, pummelled and rolled, moulded and pressed, drew out designs and left a whole heap of button-shaped objects to dry. I got a bit distracted by the process (think: plasticine for grown-ups) and even more distracted by the fact that my brand of choice smells of marzipan but I was good and restrained myself from using up the entire kilo. Life here being as it is I only got a chance to check them this morning. And guess what?

Rock solid!

Sanding, painting and varnishing come next - this is not a highspeed process. But I am absolutely chuffed to bits that they worked!

Coming soon...

Well, yesterday I worked most of the day on uploading pics and descriptions to the website. Promo material has started to go out and I reckoned it might be a good idea if people had something to look at.

It is tedious and really not my favourite part, but around a third of the commercial button listings are done now. There is light at the end of the tunnel!

I'll carry on with more today but I need to make a decision. Do I include other haberdashery items - beads, bias binding etc and slowly move everything over to this one site thus making my business more focussed, or do I keep the site focussed on buttons and buttons alone and sell the other things through other sites?

Thoughts?