How to Select Pens to Design a Button

Series Summary

Buttons are a lingering icon in American culture. Once used to promote political candidates, raise awareness of breast cancer, or affiliate the wearer with a club or organization, buttons are today retro pieces of fashion flair found usually in the glass checkout counters of vintage clothing stores, places like Hot Topic, or used record outlets. Buttons from an unknown high school that advertise some silly event are generally the most sought-after button of all. With a mirrored back and straight pin design, the button is both elegant and fashionable, especially when the design is something from the 1980s. Like tin lunchboxes and frumpy roller-skates, buttons will be a part of Americana nostalgia for an undetermined amount of time before being retired for good.

In this free video series, expert buttoner Robyn Lyman of www.manyhearts.com shows you how to make a button in your own home. You will learn how to draw a geometric design, how to select pens and colors for the intricate image, and how to put that image onto a transparency and finally onto a button. Robyn shows you how to draw 3-D designs with pens and how to choose a mirrored, glittery background for your new artwork. Whip it into a button press machine, maybe one you got from your cousin’s wife, and you will be set. Making buttons was never easier!

Video Transcript

"ROBYN LYMAN: Hi, I'm Robyn with Expert Village. I'm here to show you how to make some drawings and put them into mirrors. They're freehand drawings. This will kind of be what we're going to be work on today, this drawing here. The most important thing you want to do when you start drawing is get a good writing pen. A pen makes all the difference in the world. If you can get a pen that holds the ink real good to the paper, then that's what you want. I used to use these pens right here. They're a hybrid; they're a great pen. I use them for years. I actually have boxes of them empty. I finally threw it away. But since they came out, the gel pen, I found that the Foray is a great pen. It's acid-resistant. It holds to the paper great. It doesn't smear when it gets wet. It's waterproof. And so this is a pen of my choice now that I draw with. As you can see, I have a whole bunch of different pens. I use them for coloring, but the pen that I use to make my skeleton drawing with is the Foray. And that's a skeleton drawing."