Dr. Don's Buttons / buttonsonline.com presents:       Making buttons for High School Reunions

Another highly profitable type of button that you can produce are buttons for high school reunions. (You can see a sample of the one we produce, below... (and yes,that was me way back when).

We currently do lots of buttons each year for high school reunions and here's how we go about creating them:

First of all, the reunion company we work with provides us a list with all the names of the people who are going to attend. They also provide us with a copy of the yearbook for that particular class.

We then take the yearbook down to a local copy shop and make a photocopy of all the senior portraits.

If you plan to produce this type of button, you want to make sure that the photocopies are just the right size for your buttons.

If they are too big they won't fit. If they are too small the photograph will get lost on the button.

For best results, use a photocopy machine that can reduce and enlarge.

After photocopying the yearbook, I then create a template of the button design on our computer.

I put the school's name in curved lettering at the top, the year they graduated as"class of 199...", in curved lettering on the bottom, and then I save the design to disk.

Next, I print each student's name (in straight text) on a copy of the template that I just created.

If the button is for a man, or an unmarried woman, I put their first and last name (maiden name) on the first line.

If the button is for a married woman, I put the married name on the second line. (I do this because the people from her high school class are going to remember her by her maiden name. Having her married name on the second line also lets everyone know she is married).

I then print all of the designs.

The next step in the process is to spell check each name that is on the printed sheets.

You will find it a lot easier to do this before your designs have been cut from the sheets, because the designs will still be in the same order you typed them from your list.

If you try and spell check the names after they have been cut from the printed sheets, it will be a much tougher job.

On those rare occasions when I have made a spelling error (yeah, right) I just mark the correction on the printout and will still cut it out. I then take all the corrections back to my computer and make the necessary changes.

When all the printouts are finished I cut out the senior portrait (the photocopy) for each person who will be attending the reunion. When doing this you want to be sure and do it one photo at a time and carefully match the photo to the design that has that person's name on it. If you don't, you could easily put the photo with the wrong name.

Next, I place a small amount of glue from a glue stick on back of the photo and place it on the printed design.

When all the designs are ready, I then press all the buttons together with our 3" button machine.

The work doesn't end here, though.

Now we need to go back and make certain that we have the right photograph with the right name, and that we have a button for each student who will be attending.

There is a fair amount of labor involved in doing these buttons, but there's also a lot of profit potential!

We usually charge about $1.95 for each 3" photo button that we make, and last year the reunion company we work with purchased nearly $7000 worth of these buttons from us.

If you don't already own a 3" button machine, you really ought to check out our Model 300 SX. This machine does an outstanding job of making 3" buttons.

Dr. Don's Buttons
(800) 243-8293 or (623) 869-8233

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