How to get steam emoticons?

[estroni]

???

[Cathulhu]

Buy them from the marketplace or craft a gamebadge.

[estroni]

oooh thanks

[HEART]

You can also trade for them in the trade forums.

[estroni]

thx

[Nothgott]

6-9 cards = emo,

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

When you run a game which have Steam trading cards you'll get about half of a set dropped from it.

You can then either sell those cards on the market (or craft them for gems but that's waste of money/resources) or trade or buy cards until you've got a complete set of cards.

Once you've got a complete set you can craft a badge which will also give you a background image and an emoticon.

If you want to you can sell or buy background images and emoticions.

The badge grant you XP and the more XP you have the higher Steam level you'll be. The higher Steam level you are the more friends you can have and selected tiers also let you add some sort of "display cases" (I don't know the correct name) on your profile which let you show of your items or your most loved games or your workshop content and so on, finally having a higher Steam level also at some levels increase your chances of receiveing a booster-pack, a booster-pack will give you a few more cards for free and hence help you collect a set, unless you sell it of course, and they are generated when users in general create badges.

So you can buy exactly what you want.
Or you can collect cards for a whole set and make a badge and see what you got.
Or you can sell all your cards (or backgrounds and emoticons you don't want) if you prefer Steam-wallet instead and don't care about Steam levels, the display stuff on your profile, backgrounds and emoticons.