Fabric Button How-To Series: Making Fabric-Covered Buttons With Your Own Professional Button Machine

One of the growing trends in monogramming and embroidery is the use of fabric-covered buttons as an accessory for a number of items, from clothing to purses to shoes. Many small embroidery shops have begun to offer a selection of fabric buttons, including custom monogrammed buttons. With a professional grade button machine, a small embroidery shop can quickly expand its product offering with a fun and versatile fabric button that has a number of uses. This post is the third in our week-long series on fabric buttons.

Tuesday, we discussed important pointers for choosing the right fabric when you begin your fabric button making project. Then yesterday, we told you about the myriad uses for fabric-covered buttons. Today, we will provide an overview of why many embroidery shops are investing in their own professional button machine to produce custom fabric buttons.

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How To Make a Waterproof Pinback Button

We have had several customers ask us about how to make a pinback button that is waterproof. There is a lot of misinformation published on the web so we wanted to shed a little light on the subject. » read more

Free Button Making Software

People are always asking us is it really that easy to make a pinback button? The quick answer is, absolutely! The next question is, where can I get free button making software? The most challenging thing to accomplish when making a button is designing the artwork, everything else is a piece of cake! If you want to design a pinback button on a computer, then you need some sort of graphic design software. People are always looking for free button making software that works well and is simple to use.

There are some different choices you can make for free button making software like Gimp, however we believe in the old adage, you get what you pay for.  While Gimp is free and works for many people, it can be challenging to set up and use for a novice. This being said, if it is challenging to learn, you might as well spend a little money on Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw as these are professional software packages that do not have the problems you might encounter with free button making software such as glitches and printer driver issues.

If you are familiar with Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw, then you already have the button making battle won. Adobe Photoshop is the primary market leader for graphics, however we find Corel Draw much easier to work with for most people as it seems to be more user friendly for non-graphically minded individuals. You can buy a scaled down version of Adobe Photoshop called Photoshop Elements for about $100 and it will probably do everything you need in the Button-World. Adobe Photoshop does have a long learning curve. However once it is mastered your imagination is the only limit to creating incredible graphics.

Update: Since writing this post, ABM has made it even easier for you to create button graphics on your computer using Photoshop and Corel.

First of all, you can take advantage of special deals for Photoshop that Adobe has made available through us. Click on the following link to save $20 to $30 on NEW Adobe Elements 8 products with mail-in rebate. (Exp 10/31/2010).

In addition, we have created video tutorials and free Photoshop templates for a variety of sizes to make your Photoshop experience even easier.

[Note: Corel video and templates coming soon.]

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ABM Video Series: The Exciting World of Fabric Buttons!

As we continue with our button making video tutorial series, we take a quick break from the tutorials to celebrate the exciting world of fabric buttons.

And as you will see below, when set to a funky background beat, a montage of fabric buttons can be and is exciting!

Fabric buttons have been one of the most prominent topics that we have covered here at The Button Blog. Rather than try to re-invent the wheel or regurgitate old information, we will provide you with the links to our fabric button tutorial series, plus some other useful resources to help you in your fabric button endeavors.

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