Custom Buttons – Arts and Crafts and a Great Business!
Have you ever thought about starting a small home based business? Many people have, of course. There are a wide variety of options to choose plastic button, and a small (but fun!) option might be to craft custom buttons for friends, family, or nearby businesses!
Creating custom buttons is actually fairly easy. We’ve probably all seen the small pinback buttons available in your local toy shop, or gum-ball machine. And once you’ve seen how easy it is to create buttons for yourself, you will be amazed at the wide variety of fun, colorful buttons you can create all on your own (and even make money while doing so!).
You will need a few things to start, of course. First, are the blanks. Button blanks are small metallic forms that may or may not have a pin backing (some buttons have no pin. This is so they can be attached to clothing with a magnet to prevent having to poke a hole through garments). The button blanks are used to hold the image, which is affixed using a button making machine.
You will also need a button making machine, of course. There are many options to choose from, manual and nearly automatic. For example, a simple hand-operated button machine can help the user create a button in a couple minutes (including time to cut the image template), while some semi-automated machines can greatly speed up the process and help the user create 200-300 buttons per hour!
Finally, you will need the right paper for your buttons. The commonly accepted paper is a 24lb weight. Aside from being too expensive, heavier weight paper is prone to jamming in smaller button machines. There is no benefit to a thicker, high quality paper when creating buttons. A lighter weight paper could start to become translucent. And depending on the design you might end up with some of the metallic backing being near-visible through the paper! Certainly not the desired result! The choice in paper also depends on the recommendations of your button machine’s instructions, so be sure to read instructions carefully.
Aside from the button blanks, a button making machine and some paper, there really is not a lot to it. These resources can be find readily online and are easy to work with. Button machines will have specific instructions on how to create a button using that particular machine.
For a simple hobby, it is easy enough to invest in less expensive equipment and just have fun creating buttons for your friends. But if you want to turn button making into a business, it might be recommend to practice with inexpensive equipment until you’ve learn how to create buttons quickly (or even see if you enjoy doing it), and then upgrade to an automate solution.
In some cases, clients can pay $1-$2 per button, so it is not unrealistic to earn $200/hour for creating buttons! Even if it is just a simple, fun hobby, creating your own custom buttons can be a wonderful. Fun way to get creative and let your plastic button go wild and artistic! So go have fun making some buttons now!