How to make enamel pins
NEW Rainbow Sun & Cactus Garden pins are now available at our shop!
Take a sneak peek into our pin making process and get pin manufacturer recommendations for your upcoming project.
Pin Making Process
Step 1: Draft your design
I personally like using pencil on paper, then using a pen to clean up the lines and finalize the design. For best results, keep the design simple, use bold lines and colors. Avoid shading and complex details.
Step 2: Digitize your design
Here’s the fun part! Use design software like Adobe Illustrator or a budget friendlier option like Affinity Designer to transfer your draft into a digital illustration. Use the draft as a guide to trace the lines and finish your design. Recommended design file types are .ai, .jpg, .png, or .pdf.
Step 3: Mock-ups & Material Selection
From this step, you’ll work closely with the pin manufacturer. Once you send your digitized design files, the manufacturer will send back mock-up files with material & color suggestions. The mock-up is the closest imitation of how your physical pins will look so it’s the final & most important step before heading to production. Make sure you thoroughly review the details from size, color, material, backing, design and work with the vendor until you’re 100% satisfied with the mock-up.
The common options for pins are hard enamel vs soft enamel.
Hard enamel pins: smooth and shiny, more durable, and offers a premium look.
Soft enamel pins: raised metal edges that give texture, less expensive, and offers more design flexibility.
Step 4: Finished Product
Voilà! With a custom backing card, you can make your pins stand out even more.
Cactus Garden
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Cactus Garden *
Rainbow Sun
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Rainbow Sun *
Pin Maker Recommendations
There’s a ton of pin makers out there and to spare you some research time, I’m sharing a couple pin vendors that I enjoyed working with and were great in terms of customer service, mock-up iterations, and the quality of the final products.
Hands down my favorite pin vendor so far.
- Fabulous customer service & very responsive
- Unlimited mock-up iterations
- Lower minimum qty compared to other vendors
- Split payment option available, 50% payment up front and the remaining 50% upon final production
- Consistent pin quality & all of the products exceeded expectations
- Great customer service & fairly responsive
- Unlimited mock-up iterations
- Photo of physical pin available before bulk production
- Fairly consistent pin quality (variations with line thickness), most of products met expectations
Thank you for reading and I hope you found these tips helpful! Please comment if you have any questions.
Need tips on creating backing cards? Read How to make backing cards for enamel pins
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