Amanda here with our next gift guide installment!
Recently, I’ve started an enamel pin collection, and I absolutely love it. Pins are a great way to show off your hobbies, fandoms, and any other things that are integral to making you the awesome you that you are.
If you have any other gift ideas or want to tells us all about your personal Etsy Shop Of Wonderment, please email Sarah! We love finding off-the-beaten path gift ideas for our friends and loved ones (and sometimes ourselves).
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Below is my full collection of pins! I’m happy to divulge the origin of any you may think are pretty (if I can remember, of course).
My “pretty” board for extremely detailed pins.
My “rando” board for just random pins.
My “word” board for word-based pins.
My pink and purple pin board!
There are lots of amazing enamel pins designs on Kickstarter, if you prefer something more one of a kind. I’m also a patron of two enamel pin Patreon campaigns from two of my favorite artists: Blushsprout and Sugarbones. Both have shops, so you don’t have to be a Patreon subscriber to check out their work. The only catch is that the Patreon campaigns are a surprise and non-subscribers may not get a chance to buy the pin at a later date.
Here are links to the Sugarbones shop and the Blushsprout shop.
Want a more direct way of cultivating a pin collection? Etsy has you covered!
Icey Designs: Coffee & Books Enamel Pin, $9.85
This shop’s pins are mainly bookish designs, from book quotes to an adorable little bookshop storefront. Also, if you’re more of a tea-drinking book lover, they have a pin for that!
Literary Emporium: Taming of the Shrew Enamel Pin, $10.02
Shakespeare and snarkiness combine! Literary Emporium at Esty has an entire collection of pins dedicated to Shakespeare heroines. Plus, there are pins to celebrate some general bookish love, to commemorate your love of Gothic literature, or tap into the painful reality of dystopian-set novels.
Oh Jessica Jessica: Ferret in Turtleneck Sweater Enamel Pin, $9.71
I love cute pins and I don’t know if it gets any cuter than a ferret in a sweater, though the shop does have ferrets in hoodies if this doesn’t do it for you. The shop does have pins of other animals. Want a happy chameleon? They got it! Want a bunny riding a skateboard while wearing a snapback? Check!
Hari Draws: Set of Wooden Pins, $33.41
Though all of my personal pins are enamel, there is something about these wooden pins that I find to be so magical and whimsical. Seriously, these are some of the most detailed pins I’ve seen. While the whole set can be purchased, the pins are available individually for $8.02 a piece.
Milly Pins: Angelica Enamel Pin, $9.00
Have a friend who loves pop culture and nostalgia? Milly Pins is a perfect choice. There are pins for some throwback 90s shows (shoutout to Clarissa Explains It All), and pins for fans of The Office, Bob’s Burgers, and horror movies.
The Found Retail: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Enamel Pin, $11.00
If you’re feeling a little political right now, that’s okay. And it’s even more okay proclaim your progressiveness and feminist ideals with enamel pins! The Found Retail has “The Future is Female” pins, pink pussyhat “Resist” pins, a “Stay Woke” Maxine Waters pin, and if you’re just frustrated, they have a pin for that. It says, “Fuck Off.”
Bored Inc: Space Kitty Glitter Enamel Pin, $10.00
As someone who just had their very own space cat tattooed on her body, I love this pin. It’s so freaking darling and I always appreciate a glittery element on a pin. It just adds a little something extra. Bored Inc. also has some pins with unicorns, unicorns eating donuts, cats riding unicorns…you get the idea.
For displaying pins, I did a little DIY by using various sized embroidery hoops and remnant fabric from a local craft store. Friends of mine alternately use cork boards and shadowboxes they’ve constructed to display their collections.
If you’re not into the DIY-ing, here are a couple options for showing off those spoils!
The Shabby Stitchery: Pin Banner, $9.99
Simple, but gets the job done and has plenty of space! This banner also comes in black for $1 more at The Shabby Stitchery.
Fill A Space: Cork Board Pin Display, $8.02
I prefer circular displays as it breaks up the square and rectangular frames that I have on my walls. The benefit of this one is that the color on the bottom half of the circle is customizable!
Are you addicted to pins yet? Have I converted you?
We’ll be back next week with more gift ideas from the SBTB team! As always, let us know what you’d like to see or what’s top on your holiday wishlist!
This “FUCK IT UP SIS” pin spoke to me.
https://www.riccetticlothing.com/goodies/f-it-up-sis
Ooooh! The Found Retail has the best Beyonce pin I’ve seen (& now own)! Thank you for sharing! Definitely NSFW, but Kidd Bell has awesome activist/empowered pins (or flair as they call it): https://kiddbell.com/collections/flair
An artist I know on Etsy called Satmolly has lovely pins and magnets. Some shippy ones and fandom ones along with stickers along with lovely art.
As I’ve been using knitting (and knitting podcasts) to keep me sane for the past couple of years, I could really go for the “NEVERTHELESS SHE KNITTED” pin. https://www.nerdbirdmakery.com/product/nevertheless-she-knitted-enamel-pin
But I refuse to be seduced by pins. I already spend a lot of money on books (and have for decades), and now I spend money on yarn and needles (my LYS recently started stocking ChiaoGoo!) and as much as I like the pins, I can’t afford to be seduced. I figure that if I need pithy, snarky, angry messages to display, I will stab them onto fabric and make project bags or notions pouches for myself. (Because whaddayaknow, I have an embroidery supplies stash waiting to be used.)
TLDR: Pin money would have to come out of the book budget, so I’m doing my best to avoid that addiction.
And now the music from 1776 is going through my head – the conversation between Abigail & John Adams:
“Well, we will not make saltpeter
Until you send us pins!”
Not bad for an earworm, but not what I was expecting on Wednesday morning!
For medievalists or lovers of the weird there’s Marginalia Paraphernalia (https://www.birchbark.co.uk/index.php/shop/) Pins and other goodies based on the silly drawings in the margins of medieval texts. Want a half snail half cat? Or how about a nun plucking penises from a tree?
For classic movie-related pins and other goodies, Kate Gabrielle has you covered. https://kategabrielle.com/collections/lapel-pins
Is… is that an Olivia Waite “I PEGGED an earl” pin?!
@Frida: It is! Sarah grabbed it at this year’s RWA and mailed it to me, along with some other goodies.
AHHH Amanda I love your Shrimp Heaven Now pin!
@Robot: Kiss your dad square on the lips!
I LOVE enamel pins. I have two ita backpacks. (I think that’s what they’re called anyway.) They have a window on the front to display your pins without the risk of them falling off somewhere out in the world. I had to get a second one because I filled up the first. I didn’t want to have to dismantle it so I could add new pins!
If anyone is just getting into pins, beware the locking backs! I have a really wonderful Mass Effect pin that I put on a jacket I don’t wear anymore. I wanted to move it to my bag, but the locking back is stuck! And I don’t want to force it for fear of ruining the pin. 🙁
Side note, if anyone knows the artist who made a Mass Effect pistol pin that has “I should go” on it, please let me know! I would love to try and get another but I purchased the original pin at Emerald City Comic Con a couple years ago and don’t remember the name of the artist.
@Cheryl Omg, thank you – I’ve finally found the penis tree pin I’ve coveted ever since reading a Tumblr post about a cafeteria server who met a historian at a conference being held in the building who was so delighted that someone recognised the nun/penis tree illustration on the pin she was wearing in full view of the academics.
Recently, I went on an AliExpress rampage of enamel pin buying and it was so satisfying and cheap. I got the Don’t Be A Dick pin featured in this post, a Wednesday Addams pin saying ‘I Am Smiling’, Portuguese-style tile pins, an adorable uterus labelled ‘Cuterus’, Gudetama, a Paw Beans Appreciation Society pin, a set of succulent/cacti pins, a bumblebee, a cat with its butthole pointed at me, Hokusai waves, two cleaning bottles – one labelled Fuckboi Repellant and the other Bullshit Remover, and some geometric pins. *Happy sigh*
Not a collector, but I bought the Sensitive Badass one from the Doublclicks: http://www.thedoubleclicks.com/. I like their nerdy music!
Those are all so cute! Amanda, do you happen to remember where you got the mermaid bathing in a heart-shaped tub in your purple and pink collection? I have just started amassing some of these pins, and have an obsession with anything mermaid.
Thanks!
@Kimberly B: My mermaid one is from my Sugarbones Patreon subscription. I can’t remember what month, but the theme was “Mermaid Hotel.”
@Lucy: Have you gotten your AliExpress pins yet? I’m always worried about quality control when it comes to AliExpress.
Jane Mount’s shop at idealbookshop.com has many book cover pins and charms, and two new Bibliophile pins released in honor of her new book. (I won Bibliophile pin B in a book preorder giveaway, and it’s awesome up close, tastefully sparkly.)
My guy is really into enamel pins for reasons that remain mysterious to me, but fwiw if you’re also interested in such things, without question the one that brings the most joy to onlookers is his black lives matter pin. He gets compliments on other political ones or bands or fandoms or whatever occasionally, but all of the others combined don’t get as much love.
love these pins
Do you remember where you got the “Thanks I hate it” pin? Because that one speaks to me.
@NCK: I got that specific one from here! Though I’ve seen other “Thanks I Hate It” designs floating around, too.
@Amanda – Yes, I actually got every one of them and they didn’t really take too long considering I think most of them probably came from China. I was hesitant to try AliExpress too until this year when my friend told me it sometimes has better prices for craft things. Since then, I’ve bought a few household items, which despite ordering well before the pins came AGES after they did. Quality has been good on all items though. I still go to eBay first as I prefer using PayPal, but when something is more expensive than expected, I’ll find a better price on AliExpress. So far, I’d be comfortable recommending it – I’m waiting for a few craft items, so hopefully, that will continue to be the case. Hope that helps.
Re the “cork board pin display”. Ikea (and probably other home/hardware-type shops) sell cork placemats in a variety of sizes and shapes that will, with a swish of paint, serve as pin display boards hat look remarkably like the one shown here, and often at a much cheaper price.