New online button designer from The Button Guy. Easy button design and button artwork creation.

We just went live! Checkout this simple button design software: it’s free. A great tool for designing buttons and creating button artwork.  It even takes your button design and lays it out on the sheet for you.  With a 2-1/4″ button you make your design and then you go to print and it puts 9 up on the page in a pdf, ready to print.  In your profile you can collect and save all your designs and then print 9 different buttons on each sheet if you wish.  Simple and effective.

Online Button Designer

If you’re a graphic designer then no problem, stick to Photoshop, Illustrator, Gimp etc. But if you are not a graphics person then you can instantly make your button artwork and then the system lays your button artwork out on a page ready for printing. Sweet!

Remember your button design is key.  Once you have a good button maker, making buttons is inexpensive and pressing them is easy.  Coming up with great button artwork or a really good button design is not so easy.  Invest time in your designs.  It will pay off.  Remember a few tips:

• More is less!   Do not clutter your button.
• Bright but simple works well
• Button designs with white backgrounds work very well on buttons.
• One bright colour works well on buttons. eg. Black white then a splash of red.
• If you’re using multiple colours ensure they hang together well.

Add Some Shine to your Buttons!

We've also been experimenting with making silver buttons.  The process is very simple: Print your artwork on acetate transparency or use Dura-Lar Film for printing and button making  in reverse, cut it out and press - and let the silver shine through.  Press the button with your artwork shiny side up as the printed image will scratch off. 

You print your image in reverse and put it ink side down when making the button.  This stops any chance of the ink scratching off the button once it's made.  The ink is inside and protected.

Put the acetate print side down on a naked button to get the silver effect.Simple.  Want to make gold buttons?  Lay a metallic gold paper under the acetate.  Fluorescent?  Yes you can use fluorescent or glow in the dark papers!

You can buy acetate or clear dura-lar on our website.  Also bright gold sheets!

Hey Guys - Check out our latest discovery!!!  You can make creative buttons out of copper sheet metal.  Use the copper sheet metal as your artwork instead of paper and you do not require mylar and you get a really nice copper finish.  In the above example we embossed the copper with an old embossing machine.  It marks the soft copper and gives a kind of old fashioned typewriter effect.

This is just another example of different ways to make art buttons.  You can really get creative with your button machine!

The problem is quite simple.  How do I make buttons that are fluorescent?  My printer cannot print fluorescent colours.  How do I make gold or silver buttons? My printer cannot print gold or silver.  Well the fact is very few printers can print fluorescent colours or gold.  Even bright pink is difficult to reproduce so this article explains how to get around the limitations of printing and put really bright colors on a button. So if you want bright pink buttons just use this idea and substitute the gold paper for fluorescent pink or whatever color you choose.

I will use the example of gold because no printer can print shiny reflective gold.

What do you need to make really shiny gold buttons:

• Gold foil paper
• Printable acetate transparencies
• Circle cutter, printer and button maker (Just like you need for any button making job)

Make your artwork just like you would for any button and then reverse it. Then simply print the reverse image on a transparency.  Lay the transparency over a sheet of the gold foil paper and cut out the gold sheet and acetate together. If you have trouble with the gold foil you can always cut it separately with scissors and put it under the acetate.  It only need show through where there is no colour printed on the acetate.  You don’t even need to cut very accurately.  Now put acetate with gold backing into the button maker and press as normal. Voila!

Another tip is to print the image NOT reversed and lay the acetate over the gold foil print side down.  This way the print side is protected.  Depending on your printer and acetate combo the ink may scratch off.  This way your print is protected.

A printed transparency with the image showing through the clear acetate. The printer printed on the reverse of this transparency to protect the print surface.

The printed sheet is placed over a gold foil sheet with printed side down but image showing correctly through the acetate. Note the photo here cannot reproduce the shiny gold as per the actual gold leaf. You need to see this button. It shines!

Here we cut the acetate and the gold leaf die simultaneously using a cutting die. If you are using a graphic punch to make your buttons then cut the acetate with your punch and cut the gold leaf with scissors.

Finished buttons with shiny gold showing through the acetate. A great way to make visually striking buttons. This photo here cannot reproduce the eye catching gold.
Make one yourself and see what I mean.

Syndicated blog from TheButtonGuy.net This article is reprinted with permission. http://TheButtonGuy.net/

I just saw this on People Power Press -  This is cool.  A great way to utilise a 1″ button maker to make jewelry.

The Artclix metal pendants and bracelets have a rare earth magnet inside so you can change your bracelet or pendant design like you change your undies.

Artclix jewelery for pendants and bracelets with your 1″ button maker.

You can find the bracelets here on People Power Press.  Pendants here.

Button bracelets available so you can have interchangeable sets of button designs on a magnetic bracelet button holder.

How do you spell Jewelry Jewellery Jewelery?  No idea!

Syndicated blog from TheButtonGuy.net
This article is reprinted with permission.
http://TheButtonGuy.net/

Put your own artwork on a Pin-back Button!  I chose to make a Diamond Pin-back Button based on a painting I'd done of diamond designs.  Diamond Pin-back Buttons are made using square pin-back button parts; the square pin-back (which is black plastic) comes with three holes which can be pinned straight across for square, or diagonally for diamond.  We carry four square sizes to suite your needs: 1", 1.5", 2" and 3" and have parts to make either pin-back buttons or magnets.  

We would be happy to make diamond or square buttons for you - click here for pricing or you can look at our selection of square button makers and make them yourself!  Happy Button Making!

The folks at Winnipeg's 103.1 Virgin Radio had these tribute buttons made to celebrate the life and music of Canada's country and folk singer-songwriter "Stompin' Tom" Connors.  Best known for his songs Sudbury Saturday Night, Bud the Spud and The Hockey Song,Tom Connors music will keep us Stompin' for years to come!!

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