We are husbands, math professors, gamers, and enamel pin addicts.
We are gamers and math professors at Temple College in Temple, TX ... and we have an obsession with enamel pins. So, we decided to make our own and share them with whomever stumbles upon our growing shop.
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Johnnie Simpson has been playing Blizzard Entertainment games since he was 13 years old, starting with WarCraft: Orcs & Humans, and he hasn't stopped yet. At the 2015 BlizzCon he came across a long line for the Series 2 Enamel Pins, and something just clicked, much to the bewilderment of his then boyfriend Mark. Those were the first enamel pins that he ever owned. His love of enamel pins grew as Blizzard's offerings of enamel pins flourished. Johnnie likes doing simple, repetitive tasks (that might be why he has the most achievement points out of all Alliance players on Thunderlord-US and its connected realms), so he was dreaming of an idea to scratch that itch. In 2019, he started supporting artists selling their own enamel pins, and somehow, once these little bundles of pin joy started arriving, something finally clicked in Mark. Ideas started flowing between the two of them about what pins they could make.
What he loves about enamel pins is that they are little pieces of art that can be placed in all sorts of places. We have many on our walls, we wear them on our bags, and often one on a lapel. He enjoys dreaming up ideas with Mark (and critiquing his work) and performing the repetitive tasks associated with organizing products, fulfilling orders, and running a small business/hobby.
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Growing up Mark Leech was only a Nintendo gamer. There's no telling how many times he's defeated Ganon as Link, or saved Toad dressed up as Princess Peach. Then he met Johnnie ... Johnnie has a way of slowly getting what he wants. In this case, it was getting Mark to play Blizzard games (oh don't worry, he still plays plenty of Nintendo games). Mark's first Blizzard game was the card game Hearthstone. Johnnie used this to teach Mark the lore of WarCraft, and it worked -- he rolled a worgan mage! Mark attended his first BlizzCon in person in 2015 and helped Johnnie divide up his purchases to maximize the number of golden Murchy pins. The only pin from Series 2 that Mark wanted was the Lady Jaina Proudmore. But year after year, the enamel pins kept calling him back, like a siren to a sailor.
In Mark's undergraduate studies, he minored in art, focusing on computer graphics. When it was obvious that Johnnie had a pin problem, it was too late; it was about to be all too obvious that Mark had developed the same affliction. He found that he can funnel his creative energies and design math nerd and game inspired pins that both he and Johnnie enjoy. Mark looks forward to getting more of his design ideas turned into pins, so that others can enjoy them as much as he does.
