How To Make Stickers At Home (A Guide)

Hi everyone! Since I plan on adding a benefit of a downloadable-print-at-home sticker sheet soon, I wanted have a guide on how I make them at home! This guide is already available on Tumblr, but I wanted to move it here as well for easy indexing!

For the safety and integrity, future downloadable sticker sheet files will be available for the Kablam tier ($10 tier) only due to having my work stolen and sold on Amazon and Temu before, in order to discourage theft again. Thank you for understanding!

After using a company once (1) and the quality being subpar and smaller than expected, (as well as finding out the company's questionable ethics) I've decided to stick with this current method. Now, for me this is a process that can be very lengthy and have lots of room for error, especially when it comes to making large amounts of a design, or multiple designs, (Especially when I have to cut these out by hand) but if you are only making a few or a single design (or sheet) then this should be fun and easy for you!

Here is a list of what you need:

• Printer

• Sticker paper (this is the type that I use)

• Laminator and lamination paper (the lamination paper that I use.) You can also use adhesive non-heat lamination paper if you don’t have a laminator, gives you the same result, just be careful of bubbles. You will get double your worth out of a pack because we are splitting the pouches to cover two sticker sheets.

  Step 1: First, I use Cricut’s software to print out the sticker sheet with the guidelines around the corners so the machine can read it. I usually have bleed selected so the cut comes out cleaner.

  

• If you do NOT have a Cricut machine, open up your art program, make a canvas of 2550x3300 and fill it up with your sticker design with some cutting space between them. This the 8.5x11 size for the sticker page. Tip for non-Cricut users below: Increase the border around your sticker design to fake the ‘bleed’ effect for a cleaner cut.

  Below are the print settings I use for my printer. I use the 'use system dialogue’ to make sure I can adjust the settings, otherwise it prints out low quality by default. Make sure if you’re using the above paper that you have 'matte’ selected, and 'best quality’ selected, these aren’t usually selected by default.

• 

  So you have your sticker sheet printed!

  Step 2: Next is the lamination part. I use a hot laminator that was gifted to me, but there is no-heat types of lamination you can peel and stick on yourself if that’s not an option. There are also types of lamination you can buy that add holographic or sparkly effects.

  This is for protection and makes the colors pop, but if you prefer your stickers matte, you can skip to the cutting process. I will warn you though that without some sort of lamination, your sticker won't be water-resistant, and it will fade color faster.

  For non-cricut/folks cutting them out by hand: this is the part where you start going ham on the page with scissors. Have fun~

  Important for Cricut users or those planning to get a Cricut: You’re going to cut the lamination page to cover the stickers while also not covering the guidelines in the corners. First, take your lamination page and lay it over the sheet, take marker/pen and mark were the edges of your stickers are, and cut off the excess:

  (I save the scrap to use for smaller stickers or bonuses later on)

  After you’ve cut out your lamination rectangle, separate the two layers and lay one down on your sticker sheet over your stickers with matte side down, shiny side up. (Save the other sheet for another sticker page)

  The gloss of the lamination will prevent the machine from reading the guidelines, so be careful not to lay it over them. It also helps to cut the corners afterwards to prevent accidentally interfering with the guidelines.

  Cutting machine: I put the page on a cutting mat and keep it aligned in the corner, and feed it into the machine. For laminated pages I go between 'cardstock’ and 'poster board’ so that it cuts all the way through without any issues, but for non-laminated pages or thinner pages, I stick for 'vinyl’ and 'light card stock’. Kinda test around.

  Then hit the go button:

  When it's finished (assuming you didn't cut yours out by hand) CAREFULLY peel it off from the page. I have ripped and torn so many stickers by doing this too quickly its not even funny.

  You have a sticker now!

  The pros of making stickers at home is that you save some cost, and you have more control of your stock and how soon you can make new designs. (I can’t really afford to factory produce my stickers anyway)

  However, this can be a very time consuming, tedious process especially if you have to make a lot of them. There is also a LOT chance for some errors (misprints, miscuts, lamination bubbles, ect) that will leave you with B-grade or otherwise not-so-perfect or damaged stickers. (Little note, if you have page mess up in printing and can’t be fed into the cricut machine, you can still laminate it and cut it out by hand too.)

  I have to do a lot of sticker cutting by hand, so if you don’t have a cricut don’t stress too much about it. I have an entire drawer filled to the top of miscuts/misprints. I keep them because I don’t want to be wasteful, so maybe one day they’ll find another home. Sucks for my hand though.

  I hope this guide is helpful! Please let me know if you have any questions!