Button Display Boxes and Button Cards

This past weekend I worked at the Lillian St wood shop to make display boxes that will be part of my craft fair display and storage inventory system.  While I was there I also made some wood buttons.  The storage boxes are made mostly from recycled wood that has been languishing in my stash.  The side bars of the boxes are fun.  They are old rulers and paint stir sticks.  After taking the boxes home and filling them with button cards I realized that the boxes need to have a second bar lower on the side to prevent the button cards from falling out.  I'll do that next weekend. 

I also designed some button cards for my recycled and hand dyed buttons.  In the two cards on the ends of the photo I used images from vintage button cards.  I'm trying to express the idea of making old things new through creative reuse.  So my appropriation of these images to illustrate the button cards is in this spirit.  If you look carefully at these two cards you can see that the illustrator was suggesting uses for the buttons.  I took this thought and designed the card in the middle.  By sewing the buttons onto images of paper flowers I'm suggesting to scrapbook artists that they can use my buttons in their art.  I won't know until the Indie Knit and Spin craft fair if these cards are effective selling tools.

I like making the button cards because the process is making me learn how to do things with my software. 

Branding and Packaging my Buttons

My current task is to work on how I package my buttons.
The theme that runs through my Etsy button shop is that I take old things and make them new.  I'm using old button making techniques in new ways.  I recycle old buttons by dying them. Etc.  I want to design some packaging for my buttons that reflects that theme.

Historically buttons have been sold on cards.  This is a card from the 1920s.  It looks to me like the card designer did the 1920s version of cut and paste.  I think the message is that these buttons are well made and fancy.

I'm not sure when the two cards below were produced.  Perhaps in the fifties?  The message conveyed is that using these buttons will enhance the user's gender role.  The roles portrayed are so extreme that they seem like caricatures to me.  It amuses me that on the man's card the designer has thoughtfully given us specific instructions on where to sew the buttons.     

Contemporary button card designs tend to be simple.  Often they just have the manufacturers logo.  I want to do more than that.  I want my cards to have a lot of personality.  Here is the current version of a card for my buttons.  I like the retro feel of the design and the pattern of how the buttons are arranged on the card.  Its an affordable to make button card.  The design is going to evolve.  I'm thinking of adding historical information about button making on the back and maybe some imagery.  I am also looking for a reasonably priced source of recycled card stock.