PetFish Trinkets 2024

It's 2024 and my newest attempt to make art and have a store/website with it. Hi, I am Colton and the person behind Petfish Trinkets. 

Sadly, I am not the cat. That is Madam Meow. 

2018 was a wild ride for me. I would drop out of college for the last time and choose to work with kids with disabilities and then eventually a community public speaking job. Both of those were firsts. It would be the year my grandmother's health would decline and eventually end; someone I was extremely close to. It would be the year I would get engaged. With so much happening, I turned to art to release emotions, express self, and also cope with all the changes.

Recycled Hearts Records was born! I released a series of cassettes and CDs of various artists with the goal of raising awareness for mental health. I had previously used a moniker of "Let's Get Fired" for booking a few punk shows in the Tampa Bay area between 2015 and 2016, but this marked the beginning of me using art to truly express myself. 

While quality was quite low, I had a lot of fun doing it. Living up to the name "Recycle" I used old cassette tapes I got at thrift stores to make my cassettes. 

To promote my cassettes/CDs, I bought a cheap button maker from amazon. As seen above, the first button I made was a simple "Please Don't Suck" with a blue pen on a white piece of paper. It definitely sucked. But it made me fall in love with button making. 

Over the next year, I made numerous cassettes for different bands. The largest order I ever did was 50 that I sent to Denmark for a band called Uphill Struggle that I traded for 10ish vinyl of the same album. 

The last album I would release would be late 2019/ early 2020. I forget which. It was a split from artists Drifting Thing and Houseworth. Both artists I worked on several other projects with. Sadly, by this time my cassette recorder had been broken, and CDs cost more than the interest in them. 

Since then, I have continued to be at small art markets and punk shows in the Tampa Bay area. While I have stopped doing much musically for the time being, I have directed my attention on button making. In 2019 I upgraded my button maker to a Tecre and have the ability to make buttons, keychains, and magnets. My own artistic skills have grown, and I also have added my wife, Sami, art to the mix as w well.

This was part of my setup at the Punk Rock Matinee in Gulfport, FL spring 2024. While the name has changed to more reflect what I am vending, my goal of increasing empathy and uplifting the working class remains the same.