How I Make Stickers
I have been making stickers for years now, and I love it! Stickers are usually a natural route for artists, especially those who want to start selling their work. And for good reason! Stickers can be a simple way to get your work out there, and can be a lot of fun to make!
When it comes to designing stickers, I have two ways I do it. Sometimes I take existing work I have done, either sketchbook pieces or finished work, and I do what I need to do to get them ready to be made into stickers! For finished digital art pieces, I make sure I have made their file a PNG, and if it isn’t in that file format, then I convert it to a PNG which makes the sticker process itself a lot easier later. For traditional finished pieces, I scan the piece and then color correct the artwork on my computer. This is very important as the scanner can often desaturate or over saturate your artwork. Often the colors don’t match the real version, so make sure you do this so that your stickers can be true representations of the original piece. When it comes to creating stickers from sketchbook pieces, I take my sketch and finish the piece as a finished digital artwork. Digital artwork is easier for me to convert into stickers so if I know I have a sketchbook piece I want to make a sticker, I often just make the piece digitally so that I can cut out some of the work that a traditional piece would add.
Often with my stickers, I plan them knowing that I want them to be stickers. And so the process is different than when I look at a piece I didn’t intend to be a sticker at first. When I create a sticker design, I often sketch in a physical sketchbook. I find it easier to let ideas flow when I sketch traditionally. But there are times that I sketch digitally if for some reason I don’t have my sketchbook and then I end up doing the whole process on my laptop. When I have decided on my final design, I then either take a picture of the physical sketches or take the digital sketches and create the line art for my final sticker design on a fresh square canvas in my art program. I have used Adobe Photoshop in the past, but I have been using Krita, a program with artists in mind, for months now. I like both programs, but I appreciate that Krita is free and can still support Photoshop brushes! When creating the canvas always make sure the color model is on the CMYK option not the RGB option. CMYK is the color model that printers use, and to avoid color shifts when printing, make sure to change the color model!
After I have created and decided on the artwork that will become my stickers, it’s time to actually get down to buisness! Now a days, I am lucky enough to have a Cricut machine to cut the stickers for me. But when I started out, that was not the case. I started out with a pair of scissors, and later on an exacto knife to cut all my stickers out by hand! I wanted to share that so that you know, that even without a Cricut machine, you can still create stickers! They will just be cut at a slower rate, and you will need to be patient with the process and yourself. Try not to overwork your hands!
But now that I am able to use a Cricut machine, I upload my artwork to Cricut Design Space. When uploading, I click the complex option so that it keeps all the details. I then get taken into the next screen which allows me to clean up my file. I often get rid of the white background so that I can shape the sticker based on the design itself instead of a square. But you don’t have to do this step if you want your design as a square or rectangle sticker. This can be helpful if you want to keep the full page illustration as the sticker! Then you click the print then cut option and your art is now uploaded!
Now that we’ve uploaded out work, it’s time to format the stickers! The great thing about Cricut is that it can cut a whole bunch of stickers so much faster than had you cut them yourself! As of writing this(May 2024), Cricut Design Space now has a new sticker mode option to help you, now in Beta! I have now converted all my sticker projects to use this mode. This sticker mode cuts down on the time spent formatting the stickers! Before, you would have to take a separate shape and add it behind your design to make the clean boarder seen on most stickers, but with this new tool, it does that work for you! Whether you want a boarder on your sticker or not, it makes it so much easier when formatting. You also choose in the sticker mode whether you want die-cut or kiss-cut stickers(die-cut is best for individual stickers, kiss cut is best for sticker sheets!). Now you decide how big you want your sticker. I usually go got a 2 to 3 inch height(vertical) or width(horizonal) and allow the design to decide the other measurement. Then I duplicate the sticker and see how many will fit on one page. You can check this by pressing the “make it” button to preview the page and then go back to the canvas screen. Once you have got your page full of stickers, it is time to print and cut your stickers!
I truly enjoy designing and making stickers so much! No matter how many I make, I get all giddy seeing a new design come to life for the first time! I hope this helps you experience that too!
