You can mail in your Portland Pins if you dont live in the Portland area, or cant get to one of our drop off boxes, located at SPACE Gallery, Eli-Phant and The Art Mart. You can download a template in our Contribute section. Please send finished templates to:

Portland Pins
536 Congress St. #303 Portland, ME 04101

We look forward to seeing your designs!

Portland Pins we be at Shop-A-Do! this year, which falls on Dec. 4th and 5th at SPACE Gallery (538 Congess St.) in Portland. Come say hi, there will be new buttons as well as prints, posters and clothes at our table. Which will be a collective table of Emblem Studio work and Portland Pins.
Lots of other folks will be there as well. Alicia Allen Jewelry, Alex Argo Jewelry Design, Bobbin Studio, Boom Chick-a-Boom, Ferdinand, Jennifer Judd-McGee, KINSELLAART, Mean & Wroughten, Olive’s Vintage, Pinecone+Chickadee, Rusty Petals, Salty Kiss Press, Selfish & Talking Painting, Small Victory Studios, SPACE Gallery, Spindleworks, and Strong Arm Bindery. With music by BAM BAM.
Times are 4pm-10pm on Friday and 10am-4pm on Saturday.

Go get your Portland Pins at Find, at 16 Free St. in Portland, Maine! Meet the owner of the store Laura Ker, pictured above holding a Bryan Bruchman original pin out of our machine.

Here’s a simple little video about how 1 inch buttons are made!

Just in case you missed the issue of The Portland Daily Sun that came out a few months ago around Picnic time. Here it is!

Local music and art? It’s a Picnic in Portland

Anyone thinking that making art and music in Portland is no picnic has something to learn this weekend.

The second annual Picnic Music and Arts Festival will make its return to Portland’s Lincoln Park this Saturday, offering a full day of live music, crafts, local and regional artwork curated by some most established names in the city’s arts scene, as well as salvaged kitsch, clothing, and bicycles.

Last year’s event was such a hit with local and regional artists that Picnic organizer and Portland-based Peapod Records founder Ron Harrity, who organizes the music side of the event, said that they had to turn away prospective vendors due to a lack of space at the Franklin Arterial adjacent park on Congress Street.

On their website, organizers say the event began in 2008 “as a means to give talented emerging artists from the local DIY craft scene an opportunity to sell their wares while providing an alternative to traditional arts and craft fairs; as well as bring together some of the best indie musical acts from the area.”

“It has definitely grown pretty quickly,” said Harrity, who along with four other organizers reviewed the applications of hundreds of artists in an effort to pare down the event into a manageable size that would meet space constraints, and not overwhelm patrons.

“This is a juried craft fair,” said Picnic organizer Amy Teh of Pinecone + Chickadee, a local design and silk-screening studio, who emphasizes that while local art is sure to dominate the fair, the jury was careful to not be too Portland-centric in their selection process.

While many of Portland’s best-known studios and artists will once again be represented at Picnic

“New this year we have a company called Freakshow Effects,” said Teh. The Portland-based company catering to aesthetically inclined musicians with their unique, hand painted guitar effects pedals, with names like “Maharishi” and “The Brown Rabbit”.

Picnic is also a chance for local galleries and studios to exhibit the work of other artists as well as their own, exposing patrons to new and emerging artists from Maine and away.

Sally Struever, co-owner of Congress St design store Eli Phant, was quick to sign on to Picnic in it’s first year, hoping to gain exposure for the recently opened shop.This year, Struever plans on changing her approach to highlight more of her studios own work.

“Last year we choose four artists that we featured, and brought a lot of their work to Picnic,” said Struever. “This year, we made a lot more of our own,” including card sets, handmade books and kites for a little “something fun.”

Local photographer and USM art student Julia Wood pitched in with two friends last year to rent a table for the first annual event, where she sold Polaroid photos.

“It was a great experience, we’d never really tried to sell any of our photos before,” said Wood, who at the end of the day, had sold enough photos to cover her registration costs, with a little left over to pump back into the event.

“We just ended up spending our money at other booths,” said Wood, “I bought some awesome junk – an old tin box, a bright lime green shirt, my roommate even found a copy of Barbarella.”

But arts, crafts, and assorted “awesome junk” are just half of the event. Picnic will also feature live music throughout the day, with acts selected by Harrity, from local punk and indie bands like Marie Stella and Rutundo Sealeg, as well as national acts Lorelei and Cotton Candy.

Marie Stella guitarist, local artist and HillyTown blogger Bryan Bruchman thinks this carefully selected lineup might be a surprise to the casual art-fans who might be expecting a more ambient style of music. “There will be some pretty loud punk bands, which you might not expect to find at a free outdoor arts festival.”

Among these heavier acts is local punk/heavy rock outfit Bat Shelter, who Bruchman describes as “Kind of like Black Sabbath, really loud, really riffy.”

“This is some pretty heavy music, not just background,” said Bruchman “Hopefully people pay attention to the bands.”

Bruchman is also involved on the art side of Picnic, running a booth for Portland Pins, a collaborative project between himself and Kris Johnsen of Emblem Studios.

The ultra-affordable venture involves distributing pin templates at local galleries and businesses, encouraging locals to decorate the sheets with tiny, inch-and-a-half masterpieces, and then return the template to a drop-off spot, where it’s collected by the team, and pressed into pins which are sold at gumball-dispensers around town for 25 cents apiece.

“It’s been fun to see all sorts of local people coming up with creative ideas for tiny tiny art.” Said Bruchman.

“It’s really fun to see people get them…put a quarter in and be really excited about what they get.” He added.

Portland Pins and other affordable, local, and unique art, will be on sale this Saturday at Picnic from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Lincoln Park, corners of Congress and Franklin Arterial. This event will be held rain-or-shine.

Portland Daily Sun

A while ago myself and Bryan had a pin making session where we created packaging for a 4 pack of pins, these are all hand drawn and will be available for the first time since Picnic, at Shop-A-Do at SPACE Gallery. Which is on December 4th and 5th. Please stop by our table and pick some up! The Pin machine will also we back at SPACE for those 2 days only.