When we are not professional artists, we could be worrying about how to accomplish this masterpiece. In this article, there are many useful tips about how to design the best military challenge coins for your group.

We always know the designing a coin is not so easy.

There are many elements we should play with. These may include the style, shape, size, arrangement of the elements, 3D design, colors and finishes, etc.

All such things may bring a great impression to your design. Some of these include:

Style

For military coins, soft enamel, hard enamel and antique styles are more popular styles to apply.

Soft enamel coins feature with vibrant image and logo, recessed enamel parts and raised metal areas are its main special character. And those hard enamel coins are polished with a smooth and glossy finish.

All two crafts can make your custom coins more elegant and delicate. You can choose the style you are preferred.

If you want to create military coins with serious style, die struck coins with antique finish is still the right choice.

Shape

Most of the cheap military coins are standard round in 1.75” or 2”. It’s the first challenge coin looks like, and so classic for any occasion and events.

If you like unique coins, you also can create them as your symbol or logo shape. Custom coins can be designed in any shape.

Logo or Image

A perfect challenge coin should easily reflect the purpose of its creation. So the image on coins is the soul.

How to design the image and logo properly? 2D and 3D design are a common choice. If your logo is simple, you can choose the 3D design to make it impressive.

And the 2D images are available for all challenge coins, if the image has too many details, you can fill without any color or use offset printing or transfer printing option to replace. The effect of the image will look more clear.

Other elements

• Text

The best custom challenge coin that has a brief message is to convey its meaning and keep the design clean.

Because of limited space, short text, or obvious abbreviations are welcome on challenge coin design. It makes sense. Most military coins feature with the unit symbol and slogan, very a few coins have printed with a long oath.

• Edge

Besides the standard edge option, one of the popular edge options for the custom military coin is rope edge. It does not only present the unity and stronger of the Navy force but give more elegance and special looking to your coins.

Crosscut edge is still available for all five branches of the U.S. Armed Forces.

• Cut-out

Cut out design is another important factor you should consider. Some complex shapes are hard to design, and the cut-out process can bring amazing effects on our design.

• Finish

These popular finish options may include gold, silver, antique gold, antique silver and antique brass for military coins.

Gold and silver finish can express the meaning of honor and pride for all receivers, just like the medallion. And antique charming from coins conveys honorable, valuable and historic feeling to recipients.

• Color

Color makes our life more beautiful, it also can create an amazing appearance for your coins.

The above two coins have the same design, the left one is just die-struck without color and the right one has black enamel color. Both of them are awesome honor coins to give away, but the right one seems like putting life into the design. It’s right?

You can take the above as a reference, or trying different combinations sometimes. All these factors you choose can make your coins stand out.

By nature, all designs and options on custom challenge coins should reflect your meaning, mission, goals, and values, etc. Other presentations can help you make coins attractive as you want.

With these tips, it’s easy to start a military challenge coin now. Come on!

The post Recommended Crafts and Designs for Military Challenge Coins appeared first on GS-JJ.COM.

Breast cancer is a common and dangerous disease for women, and one in eight women may be diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. The lucky thing is that most women can survive breast cancer if they get detection and treated early.

So everyone should pay more attention to raising awareness.

How to Spread Awareness by the Individuals?

As a single person, our power is limit. But we also can make a little difference, start with ourselves.

October is the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In fact, many free and useful breast health guides are available now. And more caring people will be joining the pink ribbon and charity activities to help and support women.

There are so many things we can do this October for breast cancer awareness. Wear pink lapel pins in a public place, this is the simplest way we can do. Designed with “Breast Cancer Care” and pink symbol, custom lapel pins look nice on cloth, hat, or jacket.

Besides, we could attend related running events, speaking and conference with breast cancer wristbands or custom medals to promote that topic impressively. The little things start from us, would help call for more women’s attention.

Many non-profit organizations are always trying to collect fundraising for breast cancer research. Normally they hold a charity event and customize delicate gifts for the donators to express appreciation.

2018 Breast cancer awareness commemorative coin

Even the U.S. Mint issued the 2018 Breast cancer awareness commemorative coin on 1st, Oct. This challenge coin is highly engraved with two women of different ages and expresses their determination to fight against breast cancer. The two women spoke for all of us.

What’s more, funds from those custom coins will use for research to improve and support breast cancer treatment.

Giving away challenge coins and custom patches is a more popular way. Both of them are high-value items to hand out and collect, and they are affordable and delicate items to get fundraising opportunities easily.

More and more promotional gifts are really useful to contribute to charities that focus on the research, prevention and treatment of breast cancer. It’s an effective way for individuals and organizations. Do you have any other promotional gifts for promoting breast cancer awareness?

Helping women start now, using their own ways.

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Coin Die

A coin die is a mold with a confirmed blueprint that is used to produce coins, featuring logos, images and words you want.

An engraving die at GS-JJ factory

It is an onetime and hardened metal stamping tool that can withstand the high pressures during the production process. You need to pay for it in your first order. And if you place re-orders within a specified time, then no extra die changes are required.

Coin Metal

Standard challenge coins are made from brass metal if they are round shape. If a challenge coin has a special shape, then its metal material is zinc alloy. With special attributes, zinc alloy can be created in any shape.

Coin Size

The coin size means the diameter of the challenge coin. The most popular and standard sizes are 1.75”, and 2” in diameter. Coins in 1.75” to 2” are easy to carry and hold and look great on challenge coins displayed rack or box, etc.

Any professional challenge coin maker can produce coins from 1. 5” to 3” and other sizes customers request.

Coin Finish

Coin finish is the plating of the whole metal on the coin. There are 11 different finishes are available at GS-JJ. Gold, silver and brass are common choices, and you can choose antique finishes if you need antique charming.

Besides, a dual plating option is also a wonderful finish option you can make.

Coin Colors

Coin colors help us make the images on cheap challenge coins more impressive and vibrant. Normally, five colors or more can be filled on either side of your custom coins, standard color chart in detail you can check online.

If you want, no color, one-side color or two sides color design on challenge coin are still acceptable.

Coin Edge

The coin edge is another attractive option for a coin design. Standard edge, bezel edge, cross-cut edge, rope edge, oblique edge, spur edge are common edge options for any challenge coin.

Some coin edges are used to make a diamond effect under the light. And some edges around the coin present special meaning for specified units and groups, such as rope edge.

Cut Out

Cut out is a special treat for any challenge coin. Cut out parts are usually shaped as the logo or special icons on the inner part.

Sandblasting

Sandblasting is used to make the coin stand out with a sandblasting effect.  Gold and silver sandblasting are more popular on custom coins.

Epoxy Coating

It is a clear coating on the surface of the coin, providing a smooth surface for soft enamel coin. Epoxy coating is mainly used to protect scratching and adding a covering layer to the surface.

2D Coin and 3D Coin

2D or 3D coin? It ups the image on the surface. The 2D coin features with 2D symbol or image, and the 3D coin has raised images as vivid as the real one.

Soft Enamel Coin and Hard Enamel Coin

They are two popular types for custom coins, different crafts and process make them has a different appearance.

Recessed color areas and raised metal parts on soft enamel coin. And the hard enamel coin feature with a flat and glossy surface.

All of the metal prizes, such as lapel pins, custom medals have the same terms as challenge coins. You can refer to these above terms.

The post What are the Different Terms Used for Challenge Coin? appeared first on GS-JJ.COM.