Alex Wrekk started selling her zines, catalog buttons and custom buttons on Etsy in 2006 under the name Brainscan and changed the Etsy shop name to the same as her brick and mortar shop: Portland Button Works in 2012.

Alex Wrekk and Derek Neuland* joined forces to create Portland Button Works and zine distro in April of 2012! With a collective 15 years of button making experience, they felt their custom button making skills would be even more awesome if they worked together. Portland Button Works is an online store, and a brick and mortar storefront in Portland, Oregon.

Portland Button Works specializes in making custom buttons, magnets and other items for your project, school, band, non-profit, memorial, pub crawl or whatever reason you may need tiny pictures to pin to your clothes! We can make your buttons for you or you could come into the shop and we could show you how to press them yourself! We have buttons available in 4 sizes.

PBW also offer a large selection of our own button designs, as well as a growing zine, comic, and book distro that is carefully curated by the Portland Button Works Zine Distro Collective.

Paul Burke joined the Portland Button Works team full time in 2014.

*Derek left Portland Button Works in October of 2012.

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Alex Wrekk

Alex's life revolves around making things; primarily zines, buttons, vegan food, travel plans, and space for a cat in her bed.

Alex moved to Portland, Oregon from Salt Lake City, Utah in 1999 and worked for Microcosm Publishing from 1999 to 2006. Then she started and ran Small World Buttons until 2012. In 2012 Alex opened Portland Button Works and zine distro, an online and brick and mortar shop in North Portland, blocks away from her home of 12 years. Alex maintains the Portland Button Work website and physical shop. She relishes putting stuff in envelopes for the postal carrier to bring to you!

Alex Wrekk has been creating the zine Brainscan since 1997 with stories ranging from travel, reproductive health, love, emotional abuse recovery, zine culture, and even fiction all wrapped up in text and photocopier art. She also wrote the book Stolen Sharpie Revolution: A DIY guide for zines and zine culture that is now entering its 5th printing.

When Alex isn't doing zine things she is doing other zine things like organizing the Portland Zine Symposium, establishing July as International Zine Month, commiserating with Zine Event Organizers around the world, updating the zine event listings on the StolenSharpieRevolution.org website, hosting the podcast Nobody Cares About Your Stupid Zine Podcast, fidgeting with her Risograph printer, reading from her zines out loud on zine tours or singing in a zine themed back called The Copy Scams.

Alex also enjoys fine craft beer, collecting dice and playing Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, hanging out with her partner Paul, traveling, talking to birds and squirrels on the way to work and is a semi-recent convert to the church of cats thanks to Jackie and OJ.