Tutorial: Custom Buttons with Silhouette Cameo and Button Maker

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Today, I’m making my way home from the All Things Silhouette Conference. One of my favorite activities at the conferences is the swap! If you aren’t familiar, it’s an optional event where attendees make a small project at home and bring it to trade with other attendees. Today, I’m sharing why I chose buttons – and how I made them.

Why Did I Choose Buttons for the Conference Swap?

Of all the projects I could have done for the swap, why did I choose buttons? Well, buttons are fast to make, and great for small businesses. I chose buttons so I could give you ideas on how to use them in your own small business.

Ways to Use Buttons in your Silhouette or Cricut Business

• Great inexpensive impulse items at craft shows and fairs.
• Perfect for kids. Imagine this – you have a basket of assorted buttons at your table at a craft show. A mother is trying to have a conversation with you as her child is at her side. She can hand him/her the basket of buttons to dig through and you can finish the conversation quietly. (She will likely buy one as well!)
• Branded buttons make great giveaways to put in orders because they are cheap to make.
• While not directly business related, buttons make for great fundraisers for kids. My eldest recently had to make and sell goods at school – and buttons were our go to.

Button Tutorial

You’ll need:

• Plain copy paper – I used inexpensive paper from my printer.
• Button maker and buttons. I picked up this one from Amazon.
• Silhouette Cameo or Cricut Explore

1. Using Print and Cut (Silhouette) or Print then Cut (Cricut), create your button designs and print them on copy paper. 
2. Cut them with the Silhouette or Cricut. 
3. Remove the excess paper. 
4. Now, use the button maker to quickly put them together. My button maker has two steps. Quickly, here is how it works. Take the flat metal portion, the circle paper, and the mylar film and place them in that order into the first hole in the button maker. Then, pull the lever down. 
   
5. Place the button back in the second space, and pull the lever down. 
   

See, easy as can be! Of course, you could use scissors with your button maker – but honestly it would take forever. In less than an hour, I cut and assembled 120 buttons.

Oh! If you wanted, you could remove the pin from the backing and glue a magnet instead.

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