Make A Button

Jin's How to make 1 inch Buttons - Page 1
Belli-Button Production First, please excuse the crappy layout of this tutorial. I realized I am way to lazy to make this look pretty! So here I am using one note. Also the tutorial is more geared towards individuals who are interested in purchasing their own machine. Anyway enjoy the tutorial.

1. Getting your own button making machine!
I bought minevia ebay. The Brand of the machine is Tecro 100 (I think) and it also came with 1000 1 inch button parts. Buying your own machine is a COSTLY option but you have the freedom to make as many button as you want with various different designs. However, there are tons of companies online that offer this service of making your buttons FOR you, so this step is optional. My suggestion is that, If youplan to make a lot of buttons and sell them, its worth while to invest on your own machine!

This is what my machine looks like. I call it my Baby!

1 inch button parts come in 4 parts: Front, button back, pin, and the mylar cover.

Images from http://www.buttonsonline.com/model100.html

2. Draw Your Own Button Design!
Pretty simple stuff. Depending on what works for you, use traditional ordigital means to draw your image. I do my designs all digitally using SAI and Photoshop. There are few things you need to consider though: ○ 1 inch buttons are small - it doesn't give justice to very detailed picture ○ Some part of your drawings may not appear on the front of your buttons

Here is a simple template: you can find more detailed ones online

So, looking at the template, makesure the main part of your picture makes it inside the red circle line~ Remember though, keep your resolution high. I save my button designs in 394X394 pixels 300dpi.
Also, when you save the final picture, dont forget to get rid of the guidelines.
La rger version @ http://s ites.google.com/site/jinsgoodies/custombuttons

tutorial Page 1

Jin's How to make 1 inch Buttons - Page 2
Alright hereare few snap shots of my drawing process for Alois button design:

Yah, I am too lazy to make a separate step by step on how to draw chibis. Plus, I don't think the way I do things is that great anyway xd. However I did record via Livestream the process of drawing Alois so if you are interested,

they are here @ http://livestre.am/nqpf (part 1) http://livestre.am/nqlG (part 2)

Here is theFinal product (picture wise)! Although I drew most of his upper half body here, I know that as a button you won't see much of Alois below his bow tie. So again, when drawing refer back to the guide lines. I don't know why I bother even drawing the lower body sometimes lol. Also, I rarely draw chib legs and under cause of button design format.
You can try fitting full body chibis in the red circlebut sometimes I find that the image will appear to small on the actual 1 inch button. But that's up to you.

tutorial Page 2

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3. Print Your Design!
Here you got few choices. You can print on normal printer paper with your home color printer. You can also use outside services like printing stores (e.g. staples or kinkos) to print if your home printeris not good enough. Lastly, you can go CRAZY and print on photopaper. I have done all three options and for the quality of the image, I like the photopaper (using photoprinting services) the best but it is also the most TIME CONSUMING THING IN THE WORLD. I printed my sakura design on 4 by 6 photopaper, printed by costco! Itsss niceee

Lol why the ra ndom picture change from Alois to s a kura?Haven't printed Al ois yet so no more creepy s hota boy from now on ;A;

Using photo quality images to make your button will give you the extra crisp and vibrant colourful buttons. However, the photopaper it self is WAY to thick for you button machine to handle. It WILL give you some failure busted or exploded buttons. So how to avoid things?

You SPLICE the photopaper so that it reduces the...