Badge Making

The Badge Making workshop was only a few hours long, and really got the adrenaline going. 

I have made badges on my little Badge it machine at home, which only produces badges that are 3cm finished.   The college machine is FAR superior, but about 7 times more expensive to buy, so I won’t be investing in one quite yet.   I do like the size of the badges that the college machine produces, which is closer to 4 cm and are more attractive and commercial.

I wanted to do some badges with a painted background,  with a scanned drawing on top which meant moving quite quickly with the artwork.  I got it scanned in and into Photoshop quite quickly, and then into In Design to put in text.  Getting the college photocopier to print was another matter!  I just managed to get the badges made on time, and then discovered that the card I had prepared as a background was too large for the cellophane envelope.  Mel suggested that I did the writing in white rather than black, and as I was dissatisfied with the colouring that the first badges had – there was too much black in them -I decided to do a new set.

 

After brightening everything up in Photoshop, I altered the writing and bought the card size down to cellophane bag size.  I used thicker card and a hole punch to get the badges onto the card.  As I had used thicker card, the badges still didn’t go on very easily.  In fact, the most success I have had with getting badges onto card has been to use a thinner card but laminate it.  This gives a shiny badge on a shiny surface. Which isn’t as attractive as the badges on a matt surface. 

I still need to produce sharper images that the badges I have produced.  The writing is nice and crisp, but the badges look out-of focus.