Alex Wrekk and Paul Burke Run Portland Button Works

Alex Wrekk has been creating custom buttons since 2000 and in April of 2012 she opened the brick and mortar Portland Button Works shop in North Portland. Paul Burke ran the show while Alex was out of town at zine events but he came on board full time in the spring of 2014. 

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! Your order can be picked up and paid for at our shop or shipped around the world! We offer rush orders and design services for additional fees.

We also offer a large selection of our own button designs (get in touch for wholesale pricing if you are interested in reselling), as well as a growing zine, comic, and book distro.

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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 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.

Paul Burke

Born on Nellis AFB in North Las Vegas (and Sacramento) before being whisked away to an Air Force base in Bitburg, Germany with his family, Paul eventually ended up in Layton, Utah. Paul made zines and was in several bands in Salt Lake City before moving to Portland in 2006. For years Paul kept the button making business afloat when Alex was off on zine adventures. When he's not pressing buttons at the Portland Button Workshop and making his own hot sauce/editing podcasts/writing reviews for Sweating Peppers zine, he's enjoying craft beers, Doctor Who, and playing/recording music. Currently Paul is part of many projects, Monty Vega & the Sittin' Shivas (with members of 42 Ford Prefect, Faster Housecat, 48 Thrills, Screamin' Furies), A newly reformed Dirty Graves (with Marc P. [Tagalongs/Copy Scams] and Annie O. formerly a garage rock cover band called Commercial Breaks), Scourge of Ians (Post Pop Punk with ex-Chartbuster Matt C. and Mark V. who's rad, Matt's cool too). They also masquerade as Ramodes (Depeche Mode songs ala Ramones style), then there's an actual Ramones cover band called Lobotomen (with Ken W. [Monty] in Monty Vega and also members of Watchlist and The Punchers) playing bass and back up vox, Heaven & Earth Association (Synthpop/Darkwave with Mark V, from Scourge of Ians), New Unusuals (Psychedelic Pop Punk/with members of Faster Housecat and the Prozacs) and arranges music, sings and plays guitar/drums in The Copy Scams (the world's best international zine themed band). He also performs and writes his solo synth-pop project latenightsleept.v. since 2003.

Former Portland bands:

Tagalongs, Commercial Breaks, Faster Housecat....

Former Salt Lake City bands:

Cathy and I, The Downers, V vs. V, The Corleones, The Quitters, Ritalin Kid, Homesick, Vomiting Cockroaches, Sprinkler Head.

Also, check out his Mixcloud! Spinning records around Portland, OR under the name ACTORSLASHVAMPIRE. @actorslashvampire on IG and TikTok