How to Make Wooden Pins in 2024

Wooden pin badges are quickly becoming a favorite product for artists to make, and in this tutorial, I show you exactly how to make wooden pins in 2024.

In this article, I will introduce you to my favorite wooden pin manufacturer, Zap Creatives, whom I’ve worked with since 2019 and still work with today.

All the wooden pins showcased in this article are made with Zap, so I hope they’ll give you a nice introduction to their exceptional quality as well.

You ready? Let’s dive in!

What are wooden pins?

Pin badges are small accessories commonly used to decorate hats, coats or backpacks, and a lot of collectors choose to display them on pin boards. Wooden pins are made from, you guessed it, wood!

Manufacturers will typically offer a few different materials, and when how to make wooden pins, it’s important to consider what material you’d like to work with too.

My favorite material for wooden pins is maple veneer. This type of wood is light, so it allows for vibrant colors, and it is also smooth, which means the wooden texture doesn’t disturb your design.

I have on occasion worked with walnut wood, which has a deep and grainy texture. I absolutely love it, but it doesn’t always go with my art style, so I tend to save it for special treats.

Image: Bumblebee Pin Set, 2021. Material: Birch.

How are wooden pins made?

The first part of how to make wooden pins is sending in your artwork file. When preparing your file for your manufacturer, you need to tell them the following things:

1. What shape should your pins be cut in?
2. What area does your artwork cover?
3. Where would you like the back pin post to be positioned? Do you need more than one?

Once you send your artwork file over to your manufacturer, the production process will look something like this:

The artwork of your pins will be printed onto sheets of wood. Once dry, the shape of your pins will be cut, afterwards the production team will typically glue on the back pin posts by hand.

Image: Red-Eye Tree Frog Wooden Pin, 2022. Material: Maple Veneer.

Why do artists love them?

Artists love making wooden pins for lots of reasons, but I think one of the main ones is having the ability to preserve pencil lines or brush strokes.

There is a huge difference between making wooden pins and, say, enamel pins. When you make enamel pins, your artwork has to be cleaned up to crisp vector lines and block colors. If that’s your art style, then you might not even have to transform your artwork in order to make enamel pins. Meanwhile, artists who work with traditional mediums like paints, pencils or even ink pens, might feel like a lot of their original artwork gets lost in the enamel pin design process. Digital artists who use traditional media brushes might feel the same way, and feel a desire to preserve those rough edges and unpolished traits that makes their art, well, uniquely theirs.

Enter wooden pins: pin badges that made with a strong and beautifully textured material, while also allowing for rough pencil lines and brush strokes. Yes, you still have to clean up your artwork to some degree, but you will be fully able to preserve your beautiful brush strokes and grainy textures.

Image: Polecat Wooden Pin, 2021. Material: Maple Veneer

Do people collect wooden pins?

Yes, absolutely! While not as strong as the enamel pin collector community, the wooden pin community is certainly easier to break into.

In my small business, I find that wooden pins are more of a “variety” item from customers who collect art. For example, I might get an enamel pin collector place an order for 5-6 enamel pins, and no other items. Meanwhile, I rarely get a customer order 5-6 wooden pins and no other items.

On the other hand, I get quite a few orders consisting of a mix of wooden pins, art prints and sticker sheets, whereas I rarely get orders that mix enamel pins with art prints and sticker sheets.

In short: judging solely by my own experience, I feel like the Indie Art Collector, the person who’s highlight of Comic Con is to explore Artist Alley for independent creatives, I feel like that’s the main customer I have for wooden pins. This person might not be looking for a pin badge specifically, but it wants something with cute art on it, and when it spots a wearable pin badge, it wants it.

It’s safe to say I sell more enamel pins than wooden pin badges, but it’s equally safe to say that investing in wooden pins will cost me 1/20th of what investing in enamel pins will. In short, it’s a very accessible demand to meet.

Image: Bumblebee Wooden Pins, 2022. Material: Birch

Best wooden pin manufacturers for small businesses

If you’re wondering how to make enamel pins through a manufacturer, then you’ve come to the right place! I have been making custom wooden pins for my small business since 2019, and I’ve used the same manufacturer every year: Zap! Creatives.

Zap Creatives is a small business-friendly merchandise manufacturer who lets you manufacture your products in small batches. They offer three different woods for you to choose from: maple veneer, cherry veneer, and walnut veneer.

They used to offer European birchwood as well, which is what most of my early wooden pins were made with. They’ve now swapped this for maple veneer, which looks pretty identical, but doesn’t chip as easily as birch.

Image: Happy Frog Wooden Pin, 2021. Material: Birch

My Top 3 Tips for Making Wooden Pins

1. Clean up your artwork! Make sure you have no half transparencies in your artwork. Like, the areas of your artwork should be either 100% solid or 0% solid.
2. Increase the contrast and saturation of your artwork. When printed, your artwork might look less vibrant in real life than it does on your screen. To combat this, you can increase the contrast and saturation before you send it into production.
3. Add a “layer of white” underneath your artwork. A “layer of white” refers to a thin layer of white paint that the manufacturer will add to the surface of your wooden pin before your artwork is printed onto it. But before they can add a layer of white, you have to tell them where in the artwork you want it added. Not sure how to do this? Don’t worry! Zap Creatives have a full tutorial on how to set up your artwork for wooden pins.

Image: Lottie the Lotl Wooden Pins, 2019. Material: Birch

How much does it cost to make wooden pins?

When thinking about how to make wooden pins, pricing is a big thing! And luckily, the threshold for entering the wooden pin market is significantly lower than the enamel pin market, which might be why a lot of artists choose to start here first.

Wooden pins range from ca. £1-£2 per pin on average (ca. $1.50-$3 USD). With Zap Creatives, for example, you can order 10 pins in 20mm size for £16.90 + VAT (at the time of writing this article).

What I love about Zap is that you get access to their prices instantly. There’s no “email for a quote” or anything like that. You can just head over to their product page, select your product specs, and see prices instantly. It’s super easy!

Image: Sloth Species Wooden Pins, 2022. Material: Birch

That’s a Wrap!

I hope you enjoyed my guide on how to make wooden pins in 2024! To recap:

1. I make my wooden pins with Zap Creatives
2. My material of choice is maple veneer
3. Get 10% off your first order from Zap Creatives with code: EVY10

Best of luck on your small business journey! As always, feel free to ask me questions in the comments or leave requests for future articles.

Big hugs, – Evy

Image: Whooper Swan Wooden Pin, 2021. Material: Walnut Veneer