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hey guys it's appleman welcome back
again to my channel so for today's video
i thought i'd do something a little bit
different as you guys may know i have an
online store that i've been running for
about two to three years now alongside
my youtube channel and everything else
and in my online store one of the main
things that i sell are enamel pins i get
a lot of questions from you guys on how
exactly enamel pins are made what's the
process so for today's video i thought i
would take you guys a little bit behind
the scenes and talk about my process how
enamel pins go from an idea to art to a
finished product so let's just get right
into it because there is a lot to talk
about
so i'm going to show you guys my process
for my monster girls enamel pin set for
this set i originally created five
different designs but i only ended up
actually making three of them which were
the most popular ones because pin making
is pretty expensive so i only want to
invest in the ones that i know people
like and will want to purchase so with
the other two designs that i didn't end
up using i'm just gonna put them in my
back pocket for now i don't know if i'll
end up using them in the future but for
now they're just there but anyway for
this phase you want to make your
sketches as close to the end design as
you can i start off pretty messy and
then i start playing around with things
i move things around i make certain
things bigger smaller add details this
is the phase where you're being the most
creative and you could spend 20 minutes
on this for a design or you could spend
you know two hours on it this really
varies so this part i think is the most
fun because it's where you're being very
creative and you're you're coming up
with all your ideas and
seeing how it could translate to a real
life product
and i also like to add in some mock-ups
for color here so i can really see how
it'll look in the final image like i
said you want to get this as close to
the final thing as you can if possible
because once you're done with this
you're going to go ahead and finalize
all of your artwork
and
get that all ready for your manufacturer
i'm just going to show you my process
for anubis for this video i'm not going
to go into all of them
but you want to keep in mind that the
thickness of your line weight that you
use here in your line art is going to
translate to the thickness of the metal
lines on your pin so i personally don't
like using lines that are too thin or
too thick i try to stick somewhere in
the middle and i give my pins a bold
outline on the outside
but yeah keep that in mind because the
way you make your pin look in your
design is how it's going to translate
more or less to the actual physical
product
another thing to keep in mind is use of
color i try to limit my colors to 8 or
less and eight can still sometimes be a
lot but that is because you pay per
color when you're doing a design that's
that's one of the things that can make
your design more expensive is if you
have more colors so always keep in mind
if you can repeat a certain shade of
something somewhere else instead of
using a whole new color you know go for
that because maybe you'll want to save
more money that way if you want your
design to be super extravagant and use
20 different colors you can but you're
gonna
rack up the price that way so always
keep that in mind when creating your
designs but now that my design is
finished and ready for my manufacturer i
am going to move on to the next step
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so after i have all of my artwork
finished and all of my colors finalized
the next step is to pick colors for my
manufacturer so
this is called the pantone guide pantone
booklet whatever you want to call it um
and so basically you could think of
these as color swatches or paint
swatches these are color codes so if i
show you this one for example
these are all
color codes for different colors so
basically if i want something on one of
my pins to be this specific shade of
pink to look exactly like this in real
life i would tell my manufacturer to use
pantone 225c
this book shows you how colors will look
in real life
if you look at colors on a computer
screen or if you print colors out onto a
piece of printer paper from your
computer it'll always look different
than how the actual enamel colors will
look in real life so a book like this is
pretty essential although there are ways
around having a book like this because
online i believe i was able to buy this
set of two books for 130 which is
definitely not cheap but luckily pantone
does have some color matching guides and
color matching programs for free on the
internet so you actually can match
colors without having this book although
keep in mind that if you're matching
through using your computer using a
screen colors may not be exactly what
they look like in real life so you just
have to keep that in mind and take
things with a grain of salt so a funny
example of color matching gone wrong is
my very first pin set that i did i think
almost three years ago now
i did sailor moon dogs and cats from
sailor moon so that was my first line of
pins and when i did this set i did not
have this book so i basically was just
kind of googling colors to use that i
thought closely matched my artwork this
is what the original pin i had done was
supposed to look like this is the sailor
shiba pin and this was the orange that i
wanted for the fur and so this is the
correct version because i had another
batch made after the mistake ones but
this is the color i got when i got my
first batch
and it was because on my computer screen
it looked like this
and when i got it in person it was a
neon orange so then when i checked this
color that i had used against the actual
booklet
i realized i was actually using neon
orange
but my computer screen did not tell me
that it showed up completely different
it didn't show the neon properly so
yeah that is that is one thing that can
happen if you're not using the proper
things to color match you just have to
be really careful with that so when i'm
choosing colors something that i
normally do is i will have
either a printed out photo or i will
have a screen next to me with my drawing
on it and then what i will do
is i will take my pan tone booklet
and i will just kind of look to see if i
can find
something that is similar to each color
so if we're to start for example with
the light yellow that you see on her
cheek i would go through my
yellows which are in the front and then
i would take time matching different
ones against different parts of this and
sometimes it's just about eyeballing it
for me i've done this so many times now
i think i've made like 150 pins that i
just kind of can eyeball it and i know
what some of these look like in real
life so for example i used 7403c
for all of the light yellows in this
piece and so i repeat this process it's
very tedious this is the most tedious
part of making pins is choosing the
colors out of the booklet and this is
also the most stressful part because you
want to make sure what you choose
actually works with everything else that
you're choosing after this is done and i
have every single color chosen i go into
my software on my computer i use
medibang paint but it's just a free
software that i put everything together
on
and as you can see what i do is i lay
out all of my artworks down on to a
little kind of reference sheet that i
make for the manufacturer then i go
ahead and i do a little color pick a
little color swatch from each
color that is within the artwork and i
put it on the side next to
the artwork and from there i go ahead
and i write down all of the color codes
that i went ahead and i chose
and then after that i go ahead and i
write down all of the sizes for each pin
that i want i tell my manufacturer i
want this pin to be one and a half
inches i want it to have
a yellow backing posts little rubbers on
the back my manufacturer has a bunch of
different color little rubber pieces to
choose from so i normally pick a color
that i think will look best with
whatever pin i'm doing
so for my anubis pen for example i went
ahead and i chose
yellow because i think that that would
match
the overall color scheme
the best for everything so
i just go ahead and i tell my
manufacturer exactly what colors i want
for everything and lay it all out there
so the actual process of my manufacturer
making my pins takes about four to five
weeks on average
once they arrive they come all packaged
in a bag like this
and
each pin
is individually wrapped in plastic now i
know that this is not the most
eco-friendly thing
and i am not a big fan of the little
plastics either because for each pin
when i have to send them out i have to
one by one open them
and then toss it and it is a waste of
plastic so something that some
manufacturers are starting to do is if
you request it you can potentially ask
them to wrap each pin in groups of
tissue paper and everything so that you
waste less plastic so that is my
something i might swap over to
anyway when my pin comes in
this is how they look
so here is the back for this one i chose
black nickel for the metal plating
and let me turn it over
here is what she looks like and she's
pretty close to the colors that i picked
or i should say that i had in my
original art the only thing that was a
little different on this is the gold
that i chose the darker yellow uh was a
little bit duller than i wanted but
sometimes that happens as long as the
overall pin looks good i don't fret too
much about colors that don't exactly
match
now the only one that i really kind of
had an issue with was the moth which you
see here
and her skin tone came out a shade
darker than i originally wanted it but
it actually doesn't look bad and i don't
mind it because i think it kind of fits
the overall color theme
on her so i didn't ask my manufacturer
to remake these because i thought it
still looked good and it let the whites
pop a little bit more on here and this
is the back i chose green for this one
and i have my back stamp i don't know if
you can read it it's going to be hard to
focus but it says apple mint with my
little apple
mint logo behind it
and then the last one in this batch
was the
mermaid and she came out really cute i
love all the colors and all of the
screen printing and if you don't know
what screen printing is if you can see
right here how there's no metal outlines
surrounding these highlights in her hair
it's just printed directly on there
that's what screen printing is it costs
extra but
it i think is always worth it
my current favorite example of screen
printing is actually
my june pin club pin and i did like
three different colors of screen
printing on this one but i did
a whole lot of big screen printed areas
and sections i'm gonna try to focus that
but i really love how this one came out
as you can see
the orange and everything the red
everything is kind of like just it looks
like a drawing almost looks like a
painting
but it is an enamel pin but
that is what they look like when they
come in and then the next step is to
grade the pins so i'll tell you a little
bit about how that works next so grading
enamel pins is actually a very um also a
pretty tedious process but like i've
said i've i've graded thousands of pins
so i have a very specific
thing that i look for and i'm pretty
quick with it now but when i started i
was pretty slow
basically if a pin has a little
dot or scratch on it something that
would when you look at it make it look
like there's a mistake or something
noticeable i will mark that as a b grade
and i will put it to the side
my manufacturer is pretty good so i
usually don't have a lot of b grades or
mistake pins but those i will typically
sell in mystery bags and things like
that at a discount so i don't know if
you guys can tell but there is a line
that goes right across the cheek it's
extremely hard to see on camera you
might be able to see it as a black dot
right there but on this pin specifically
i marked this as a b grade it has it on
the other side too even though the color
is wrong when i sold this as was as it
was with the color
i would have marked this as a b grade
because
there are little blemishes there and
they just don't look
good
so once i have all of my pins graded and
separated it's time to prepare
everything for the store so i bought
this on etsy galloway labs i believe is
their name on etsy basically it has a
big
pin it's a big container inside
and it's got this little apparatus piece
on top whatever you want to call it but
you slide your pins through here and it
gets the backings off and collect some
in this little box
and this just makes it so much easier
than if i was sitting here and i'm going
like like this
for each
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individual pin
see and every single one if you're doing
that hundreds and thousands of times
your hands are just gonna fall off let
me show you how easy it is to remove the
backs
so i just i slide it
in here
and then
and now they're off
um and so it collects them in here for
me
and once i have them all done you know
i'll typically do like 50 at a time or
something they're ready for my backing
cards which here's just one of them i
have a bunch of different designs so
i basically just center the pin like
that
and i push it through
some people use a little piece of foam
or sponge i typically just do it like
this because it's faster for me
and then once you do that
you
stick them right back on the back
and
there you go
that is an enamel pin
from start to finish ready for the store
to be sold
so
i repeat this process
uh from you know the drawing phase to
the color picking phase the ordering the
grading
and the prepping i do that for all of my
enamel pins for both my store and my pin
club so this is definitely a process but
it is something that i really enjoy i
love creating new things and new pins
and products and it just makes me really
makes me really happy so i hope that
listening a little bit to my process was
interesting for you
so if you guys have any questions on
enamel pins or making or anything that i
talked about in the video today please
feel free to leave a comment in the
comment section below a question and
i'll try to answer it the only thing i
will not answer is what the actual
manufacturer i use is i have a variety
of reasons why i don't share that but if
you do want to know where you can start
looking for a manufacturer the website
alibaba
is a good place to start and i will put
the link in the description box below i
will say pin making
is something that is expensive and it's
very time consuming and it can be a lot
of trial and error involved so i would
say
it's not something that you should just
jump into but it's something that should
be built up to um of course i'm not
going to tell anybody what to do if they
really want to get into pin making i
think that's great but i also think that
um
in terms of
you know the money and time that needs
to be invested you need to make sure as
best you can
that you're going to be able to make
back what you're putting into your pins
but that's a whole other conversation
for another day on running a business
and all that and
maybe i can make a video on that one day
if you're ever interested but for now
thank you guys so much for watching
today's video i hope you enjoyed and
learned something and as always all of
my links are in the description box
below i've got the link to my online
store my patreon pin club my discord
server and my instagram so
thank you guys so much for watching and
i will see you guys all next friday at 4
p.m eastern time as always hope you have
a wonderful weekend
bye
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