So...I bought a Pin Maker

Recently I...let's say I was in my right state of mind so this sounds like a great decision...bought a badge maker from Badge-a-Minit. It's great! I got the $29.99 2 1/4 in starter kit to make pins for fun/my band/FOR FUN. I've only made 2 with my own machine, but my friend also bought 2 pin machines from them. She bought a 3 inch one and and also the same starter kit I got.

These are the pins I've made so far...

The smiley face one was a practice pin and the image came with the kit but I love smileys so much, the 3" one is a prototype for my band, trying to juxtapose the harshness of the lettering to the backgrounds they're on, and the Oz pin I made because ily Oz so much what a cutie. For the last pin I made I used some pretty neat, free, internet tools to help out. 

Basically I just started with googling an image of Oz and a few heart shapes and candy hearts. Then I went to Clipping Magic  to make the images transparent. Here's what it looks like, its super easy to use.

This is a photo of my mom and dad I used to make a collage from my dad's Christmas gift. It's a really simple to use tool and this is a quick edit, but if you want to smooth out the edges of your imaged just slowly click with the red marker around the edges of the photo (I don't recommend long brush strokes for the detail work because undoing at that point is a bummer).

Then to put it all together I picked a bokeh hearts stock photo I thought contrasted well with the images I would be layering over it and used Beezmap to make a free form collage. You have to sign in with either a facebook or twitter which can be annoying but at least you don't have to make yet another account. So yeah just click make a collage and then select "free form".

The actual interface is super easy, they have background colors to choose from if you don't have an image you want to use as a background. They have a "move back" and "bring forward feature that are really simple to move the layers around. And in the end you can download it and do whatever to it. 

So if you wanna make collages for pins like I do or just for fun these are really helpful because I know photoshop and all that can be confusing. I like making gift and b-day cards and whatnot on here its always a big hit! :)