It all began on October 22, 2002 when Jeremy Hedley posted the original offering of buttons. I, as many others, were infatuated with these for quite some time and begun collecting as many as I could. Eventually my website became the depository for all things STB.
There are many resources available to make your own button. Adam Kalsey has a Button Maker and Pierre has a more robust one which are basically web GUIs for Bill Zeller's script. The official font of STB is 6px Silkscreen (by Jason Kottke). It is best when aliasing is turned off in Photoshop.