Rosie the Riveter

A friend asked me to make a Rosie the Riveter button for her. Not a button with the iconic "We Can Do It!" image, but the actual button Rosie is wearing in the poster so she could wear it for a costume. I decided to also make one for my shop. This is what I came up with:



Not exactly what she was wearing on her collar, but I think it's pretty close. I decided to go ahead and list it in my Etsy shop and see if anyone else would buy it. It's already my highest selling button.

Now, my shop has only been open a few weeks, so none of the other buttons have had much time on the market, so to speak, but I've only sold one other design so far, and while it has sold multiple times as well, Rosie beat it with less time in my shop. Apparently, Rosie is a popular Halloween costume this year.

Halloween is almost here, so I expect the sales to slow down soon, at least for the two buttons that have been selling (the other is also a good costume accessory, but has good general use as well). I have designed two more buttons, which I plan to list tomorrow. One is Rosie related, one is not. The other is the first in what I hope will be a series. We'll see how it goes.

A fun fact about Rosie the Riveter, in closing, that I didn't know until I did the research on the button on her collar. As it turns out, the iconic "We Can Do It!" poster is not really Rosie the Riveter. That poster was a motivational poster that was used briefly in Westinghouse to boost the morale of female employees so they would be more productive. I find its origins interesting in light of what it has become today. The REAL Rosie the Riveter, who was first named in a song, is also a Norman Rockwell painting that is copyrighted. The motivational poster is not copyrighted, which is why it became the iconic symbol of Rosie the Riveter when she was revived in the 1980s.

So, thanks to lack of copyright, she is now the Rosie the Riveter we all know and love, regardless of her origins.