Make Stickers at Home

1. Introduction: stickers are a great way for people to express their ideas, interests and beliefs in this class. Learn how to create your very own stickers from start to finish. Third. Hello, I am Evan. I tick. I'm a freelance illustrator and designer and also the owner of a small stationery, greeting card and gift company. Fox and Crow stickers are a great way to get your art out into the world in a medium that's affordable for most people. We'll talk about design process materials, preparations for print, self printing as well as other manufacturing options, Okay? 2. Design Process: Step one in the design process is checking out what's already out there. What are people buying? What are they excited about? I like to use Pinterest and Instagram for product research. And if there's any cool stories that carry stickers in your area, would be a great idea to check them out, especially if you want to sell locally. When you're examining existing products, Ask yourself questions about the style, the content, but also the production. So asked herself, What size is that My seeing? How are they packaged? What colors? What's the finishes it glossy? Is it Matt? What do I like? Well, it's always important to know what's out there. When designing a new product and to consider your market, I find it's usually best to design something that you would want to use. You may already have art that you want to use for stickers, which is perfect. Or you might want to design a new line, which is great, too, if you're creating a new design. Once you decide on the concept for your sticker creates several versions of that design in whatever way, you're most comfortable creating any medium work we can droppings digitally or we can scan them in and I'll go over both of those options. It's really smart to take a moment to get some feedback on your design before going forward . Posting your design ideas on social media and asking friends and followers to vote or to offer advice on the best design will help you make an informed decision on and will ensure your design is clear. It is also a great way to get people engaged in your work. Often, people who voted or offer advice on my designs end up buying the product later crease poster sketches or design ideas on the project page for this class. If you'd like to get feedback from me and your classmates. 3. Materials and Eqipment: different stickers at home, you'll need a printer, sticker paper, a scanner or a scanning app on your phone. If you're making stickers from a hand painted or drawn image, you only photo shop or a similar program. There's programs online that do what Photoshopped do essentially for free, such as pick slur on. You only need scissors and or a die cut. This is my printer. It's a cannon Prisma Pro. It's a fantastic printer. It's around $300 so it's not like a huge start up fee. If you're looking for a printer, you can use whatever printer you have at home to do this on these inkjet printers, the expense really is in the ink there. Every time you fill all the ink tank, it's It's like upwards of $100 but with using printer of profiles, which I'll go over later in our prepping the print files video, you can get some pretty incredible images that really capture exactly You know what your what you created. So this is the paper that I use. It's Papi Leo Contouring white waterproof final, and it comes in 8.5 by 11 inch sheets. This paper is pretty Matt on, and they have a spray that you can purchase that you put over it. Once the images have been printed, that is, ah, high gloss spray, and it also makes it even more durable. I actually really like the look that the more math look. I think it's a little less common with stickers, so it gives my stickers kind of different feeling. If you're going to be using hand painted or hand drawn images for your stickers, then you need to be able to get really high resolution files into your computer for your print files. So I find that the best way to get really high resolution, true original images is scanner. So my scanner is the EPS in perfection be 500 photo scanner. This is a really nice scanner that somebody was getting rid of, so I actually got it for free, which was awesome. But there's all different levels of scanner on the different price points. You can get combination printer scanners, which is great. There's also APS for your smartphone that are pretty, pretty solid scanners, actually. So I will actually all list a few of those in the notes for this collapse. If you want to give them a try, there will be more on the printer and the scanner on when we get to our prepping images videos. So here's a super super sped up version of what I'm Gonna Teach you Later in photo shots, you can see him editing out the background. If you're doing hand drawn images, you'll need but a shop or another digital editing program. Teoh edit out the background and, you know, make it look really crisp and professional. And here's a super sped up version that I will be going over in detail later on of how to create a print file. So you also need a program like Photoshopped or pick slur to create on YouTube. Format your stickers in a way where you can use the print paper effectively. It's a really fantastic tool, and you don't need to learn everything about it. You just weren't enough to do what you need to do for this. So for the most part, I make stickers that are not standard shapes, so I like to hand cut them out. But if you want to do stickers that are circular or star shaped or heart shaped. You can get a die cut from your local Michael's, or you can order probably more, more shape options online. This one is a heart, and what you do is you just insert your image like this and can see it. This will narwhal some seaweed around it, and then you closed, and then you have your image on a die cut. So if you want to, do you know the same exact shape repetitive. This is a good option. You can get them in all different sizes. This is this is just one of the ones that I have, So I like to use scissors to cut out my stickers. You need a pair of really sharp scissors and on your sheet of printed stickers. So I already started cutting this one. This is a sticker I've you that is the state of Florida made out of oranges. It's where I live, so these sell really well locally. I really personally enjoy doing something of my hands always, and I find it relaxing. So when I'm watching TV or when I'm at a craft market, if it's quiet for a little bit, I just I always have my stack of sticker papers and my scissors to do that work for some people if it's not your thing to do repetitive work or, you know, if your hands are just too tired to do that kind of work, you might prefer to either use a die cut or to have your stickers manufactured, which I'll get into in a little bit the skill I've since I started doing this, my scissor skills have improved. Incredibly, it's like anything practice makes you know improvement makes perfect, so I'll show you how I do it. Depending on how complicated the shape is, I might first just break them up into different sections like this. Okay, so when I'm cutting these, I like to leave a border around them. I think that the white border, or from printing it with color on so frames it and makes it look really nice. So to cut just kind of diet and you'll find that it doesn't have to be perfect like I sell , you know, these stickers wholesale on Don't give someone an order of 100 stickers that I've hand cut all of them, Um, and after a bit of practice. You know, nobody can tell. It's like slight differences and also kind of special, because it's, you know, individual hand of the artist who created it had on an actual role in the production of it . So there's in Florida orange. 4. Preparing Image Files: I do combination of hand created work and digitally created work for my stickers. So here's a recent painting I made on. Actually, this piece is for a Father's Day card. It's a dad slaw and a baby's law, but I thought it also might make a great sticker. So what I once I finish my drawing painting whatever medium you're comfortable in, you want to put it in your scanner or use your, um, photo scanning app, which I can't show you because I'm using my iPhone to shoot this eso again in the notes all . All place a link to somewhere where you can learn about how to use a cell phone scanning app. So if you're using natural family, you put it in the scanner, close it, make sure it is, um, awesome on, and now we'll go to my computer screen so I can show you how to scan it and how to edit it in photo shop, stalking me or pixel. Now that I have my image in the scanner bed, I'm going to open up since can on my computer. Here we go. And at the image on the right is the last time I scan. So I'm gonna hit preview to see the new image that I put in the scanner bed. Here we go. So here's the image. Um, I'm going to drag around it, take my mouse up there and drag the shape around it because that will of the skin or no, to just scan this part of the image. And I'm gonna go over on different options. I want the reflective surface document table is a photo. It's higher. Resolution 48 colors the highest option, and the resolution is 300 dots per inch. That's print quality. So that's all I'm gonna need to do in my menu here. I'm gonna hit scam. Now this dialog box will come up and will create a name that makes sense that I'll be able to find this image easily. So straw grief should work and often for bigger print, big file into a tiff. But I'm going to do a J peg for this, since that should be plenty big enough of a file for a sticker and I will hit Okay, takes a moment to scan, and it's collecting a really high resolution files, and here we go. It we're gonna quit absence can and open Photoshopped. So I mentioned you can also use pick slur, which is a lot like photo shop. It's free online. Very similar. We're gonna open our file that we just scanned in goats J pegs Law three. Here we go. First things first is I'm going to double click the layer where it's locked the background layer. Okay, a click on top of the name layer zero and rename it Sloth. And, uh, I'm just gonna turn the file, um, somewhere file and image rotation, and I'm gonna hit 90 degrees counterclockwise. So I'm just looking at my image the way it's intended. Now, I'm gonna go over to my menu bar on the left, and I'm gonna select the magic wand tool, which is also keyboard shortcut W I'm gonna click on the white and hit delete. So it's a pretty easy image to edit, since the background is really different than the painted color. Gonna go over left and hit my magnifying glass, which is also a keyboard shortcut z and just click to magnify and select and delete other large parts of the background that I don't need. Your week Oh, so I can select that hit Delete. There's other ways of doing this. So I'm gonna go over to my menu bar again and select the lasso tool, which is keyboard shortcut L. I like to suck the polygon. Alas, all too. It gives me the good control, but also unable to contour so you can see that it comes out is a straight line, and it will connect to each placing click. So I'm doing little movements and clicking because this is an organic shape so that I can capture the same shape. So it's not just straight lines gonna continue, go around my time, select this area that I'd like to delete. And then when I get back to the beginning and that little circle shows up, I click it and hit delete. And there you go. We'll continue to go around my image in this zoomed in mode. Um, and right here I'm gonna do, uh, though magic want will against because it seemed doable. And then this little area that the magic wand didn't collect I'm using my polygonal lasso tool again. It's locked in and deleting it. I'm seeing other areas that are little ragged someone to go in with my lasso tool there, too, and lead it. It's really worth it to take time in digital editing, I'm gonna select my magnifying glass tool and I'm hitting option to zoom out again. The option clicking amount. Then when I wanted to go back in, um, I will just click again back in. So I'm seeing another area that needs a little cleaning up and use my lasso tool. Go. I'm just investigating further here. Option to zoom out when I click and lasso tool to clean up these little areas that looked like they might show up and not look great in the final sticker. Take my time. No lasso tool clicking Great The shapes hitting Delete. Once I've selected area things in tool man, see then thing down option while I click out Awesome. So I'm selecting anyway, over here, that little button there creates a new layer, and I'm select Graham Layer and movie it under me because I want to put a white background . And so I'm selecting the color white Go and then going to the paint bucket, which is command G for the shortcut, and I'm going to select layer by layer on doing the white. This is just so I can see Since I'm printing on white paper, I want to see how my image looks up against white. Sometimes it means that you do a little less editing if the things you're gonna edit out are just white were very close toe white. So I'm feeling good about this image like it's ready to go to a print file and de selecting . I want my clear background file save as. And I want to see if this is the kind of file that can keep a clear background and OK, so on I'm gonna just see it, I think, to my desktop. For now, I can easily access it, um, in its law for sticker, and I'm going to save it as a P and G's. I'm going down to P and G because that's the kind of file that has a clear background. And that's really important when you're creating your print file. So I'm gonna save that. All those look good. You want the commission compression? Smallest slow Look, OK, when I create images digitally, I usually do them on my iPad pro in procreate with the apple pencil on. If you're interested in these, I highly recommend them, especially if your background is in traditional medium. It's feels like drawing and you can really create, um, anything you want. It's awesome. Eso I'll show you how to prep a digital file. This is true for digital files created in in procreate as well as any other digital program on. So even if you're not using this program, this information will be helpful to you. So this is a on an image of the Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg zooming in there . Yeah, on which I've been using for, like, a number of different products, and I'd like to make a sticker out of it. So the first thing I need to do is create a clear background. So I've gone into my layers, and in any digital program like photo shop or illustrator, there's different layers that you can turn on and off. So I'm gonna uncheck that the layer that I created a color but also I'm going to the background layer Oops, where that friendlier and I'm de selecting that. So now I have an image with a clear background layer growth. You can see my fingerprints. Well, well. And, uh, you can see in here. It's kind of like it's all dark. It all turns the color of the background. Um, and so all know that it is clear in the background. So to send this image myself, I select it and this is the important part. I save it for here. It's a share. I save it as a P and G A. P and G is just image that has a clear background. So send that to myself. Perfect. 5. Preparing Print Files: Alright, it's time to put together a print file. We're gonna file new or command and we're gonna open on the new file dialog box when I switch it two inches. We are going to name our file Well, and RBG sticker file me are going to, um we know that our Phileo paper is 8.5 by 11 engines. So we're going to create a file that is that size. We want the resolution to be 300 pixels prints. That's the print, uh, standard and we're going to click. OK, here is our file. So we're gonna have to put our images in, so we're going to file and down to place embedded. Um and we are files right on our desktop, so we're opening our slaw, but I thought the reef sticker PNG s is that clear background on top of our file and we're also going to open our RBG file will print both the digital and the hand drawn images together. So place in vetted and there's our sticker RPGs thing that again, the PNG, the clear background, and you can even see the sloth behind our BG's. You know, she is a clear background. You don't have to worry about the backgrounds getting in the way of the stickers. So here on creating guides, you just go over to the wars on the side or the top of your photo shop or pixel file, and you can drag them down on do sort of see over on the sides toe What area doing So I'm putting like a little less than 1/2 an inch border around my file because sometimes the edges get cut off under printing. So I like to just be safe and not have things that cut off. And now I'm just putting kind of a grid across every couple of inches, have a sense, you know, the size of my stickers and how I'm gonna put them together. So again, I'm just going up to the rulers, clicking and dragging down to create my guide. So now, in a click on Route Bitter Ginsburg here now she selected even to the X and I'm holding shift down as I drag from the corner to make her smaller, I'm selecting her bring her to the top again, holding down shift as I drag from the corner to adjust her size and hit Enter a non selecting my slaw and you can see the exit selected and I'm dragging it down my mouse going to the corner hole and shift to keep it to make sure it doesn't work. Um, and making it into a smaller image in the corner every day. I'm just making sure nothing could pass those guys I created. I'm entered to place the file I and I'm going back up to RBG selecting her. And again, I'm gonna go from the corner to make for a bit smaller. So holding shipped there were holding shift down. Right now I'm going to the right to my layers bar in command and on the Arby's, you layer, I'm gonna go up to duplicate layer and click. OK, RBG sticker copy is the name of it. Um I am going to now select that layer by clicking on it and dragging it over with my mouse . Now I'll be a pro fit more on here if I rotate this image. So go over to the corner till I get a little circular aero button and rotating it, using my mouse to drag it around. Um and I'm sort of fitting it in like a puzzle piece. Uh, so I can fit as many stickers on. But I have to make sure to leave a margin around each image or when I'm cutting, so I'm gonna go back. It's like the first image again. Click on in the layers menu and hit duplicate layer layer Poppy, too. Okay, I'm going to select that and frag. So here's where I'm thinking about as a puzzle. Now it looks like I've made the image a little too big to fit comfortably with margins. I'm gonna select all three. You can select all three at the same time and edit them together. And just like before, I'm going to the corner to drag him down and make a little smaller this way. I'm sizing them at the same time. They'll all still be the same side, some selecting the one of the right now just quickly on it and using my arrow keys on my keyboard to drag it over. Not going past that margin I made for myself so that nothing gets cut off printing, and I'm just adjusting them slightly toe leave. Uh, you know, that margin hunting that looks good to me. So I'm gonna again select all three by dragging my mouse over them. You can see they're selected on the right over there in the layers far. So I'm gonna select that man and click. Um, and I went duplicate layers now because I have three selected it. Okay? It's duplicating all three of those layers you can see over here in the layers. Many okay. Clicking to select couldn't right in the middle and using my arrow keys. You bring the new three images down. There we go. I'm just gonna select it. Dragged down now, leaving enough margin between the top three. Bottom three were cutting somebody fly or enter, Use it. And now I'm going down to my slaw again. I'm thinking like a puzzle, and it looks like if I rotate quick, that's law and go to the corner and see my circular arrows. And I rotate it that it will fit light perfectly in that. Here we go again. Not going past the margins that I created for myself or printing. Enter place that file and I'm going over clicking, going up to duplicate layer again and hitting. Okay. Selecting and tracking with my mouth's. And I'm thinking I'm gonna actually rotate this and make it a bigger image. So I have two size options for the sticker. I want to actually see them and feel it in my hand and see what size I like better on. Yeah. Got a bit more. Hey, and here you have it. This is our profile. 6. Printing and Cutting: and we're back with our print file in photo shop. Now, we're gonna go to file, um, and select print or hit command pee on our keyboard, and our printer dialog box will open up so you can see here that, uh, right now, the last thing I must have printed it was seven just by 10 inches. So you see that the files getting cut off, So I'm gonna go into my print settings and else change the sides first. So 8.5 by 11. Standard size right there. And I'm gonna go into quality and media. Now, uh, we're gonna expect media type here. Uh, there's so many different kinds of papers, Print don, and your printer needs to know what it's printing on to do a really good job. You can see all these different options here. Uh, I normally print on Matt paper, and this paper looks mad, but actually, a paleo sends instructions with its paper, and they tell you to make sure that your printer profile is glossy paper. So I'm going to select other glossy paper right there. Oh, right. Um, you wanna always, always, always make sure your print quality is high a princip it slower when it's a high quality print job, but it prints much better. Okay, so you can even see in that little image there on the left that it is now in the correct size paper. Now, we're just making sure that our printer knows toe. Listen to photo shop about the colors. We're just gonna say Photoshopped manages color and we're gonna select. We're just letting it know what kind of paper we selected, which was the other glossy paper options. Or click that right there. All of those settings look good, will print one first. So ready to print so you can hear the printer warming up and ready to tee up a friend. There we go. I'm my printer. Has you put the paper in the top tray and you can see here how slowly it's going. So just remember, when you're printing high quality, it does go really slow. So here is the image. Time to come out the bottom so we'll jump ahead here a bit. There you go. Almost done. And here's the full image. The digital, the R, B G's and the sloths both look exactly like the original files, My sharp scissors and I'm getting ready to cut. And while I'm cutting, I think I'll just separate the top three outs that I don't worry about. Handling page Nice and being really careful of these margins, I'm making sure I'm leaving enough white around all of them. See, I'll cut these ones out as well. So three different peace is to cut from Okay, So first I would cut around our big slaw sticker, and it really does not have to be perfect as I mentioned before, especially with an image that sort of uneven like that. The margin can get a little bit wider and a little bit skinnier as you go. Uh, and I find it's best to keep. This is Ron and kind of like rotated as you cut rather than do a series of cuts. You get a nice you know, more even blowing line. That way. Here we go, places that now let's do a route. So again, on a her I'm also trying to do it, like keeping the scissors on the paper rather than taking them on it off. And I'm using my fans toe roti the paper I I cut that off. Their exit was hanging a bit too much. Yeah, back in those details. There we go. And you can see even here that it's a little bit thinner over here. A little bit thicker there and then down there, it's too thick, so I'll make that a little bit better. You're trying around the corner there a bit. Okay, there she is. There's our slaw are two stickers. 7. Manufacturing Options: if you'd like to get your stickers manufactured, either because you want to do a big order or you don't have the set up to print stickers at home or the time you can get your stickers manufactured on a lot of different online sites . And some sites that have come highly recommended to me by other artists are sticker mule, smart press and red bubble on. But there are many more out there. So do some research and compare prices and figure out what's right for you. What's cool about Red Bubble is that you can put your stickers up and you don't have to order them. You can send people to your red bubble store on so people can order the stickers. Your profit margin is less you get, I think 20 something or 30 something cents per sticker. But it could be a great option as well. Your main options when having stickers printed are die cut or kiss cut. Die cut stickers are full there. The full image. It's cut out the shape of your sticker on, and they have no extra kind of paper around them. I'll show you an example. Fun. This is a Nope. 2020 sticker from yes, Queen Threats, um, on etc. And a kiss cut option is this. I have these stickers on printed actually on Zazzle when they had a big sale on, and the kiss cut is like this so that a laser cutter goes only through one layer. So if you're getting if you want to take a sheet of different sticker images, then you probably want to do a kiss cut sheet like this. Sometimes an issue with Kiss cut is like you can lose a little bit of the image, or there's a little bit of discoloration around it. I haven't had too many issues with that, though, and most companies will like work with you if it if it doesn't look great and they'll, you know, reprint the price per sticker. If you're doing manufacturing, it's really important to know that if you order a large quantity, you will get more for your money. So if you order five stickers, they might be $2 each. But if you order 100 stickers, they might be 20 cents each, so it could be really smart to do that. One reason why you might want to order if you want to order a lot of different designs than the website, smart press could be really great because they let you include different different images in your overall quantity. So you can, like, choose different on like five different signs of 50 each, and you still get that that price cut for doing mawr, even though you're doing different designs. 8. Packaging Options: So if you want to sell a product, packaging is always crucial. You don't want to skip that step. A great product that's not packaged well can look unprofessional. And if you want to do wholesale, especially, it's unappealing. Teoh retailers, because they need Teoh, put it up and make their store look attractive. So when on selling wholesale, I create sticker packs in little hanging things. So I create a piece of paper that would essentially not accept. I create a piece of paper with some images around it with my name of my company, Fox and Crow. Um, and with my website and what's in it. So you know, three sea creature steppers right here. This is a plastic packaging, which I'm trying to avoid as much as possible. There are more and more options for biodegradable or plant based plastics on. I just bought, like thousands of these, uh, before I knew that. So I'm still using them until I get rid of him. Be other. When I sell stickers in person, I do a lot of local markets, and those kinds of things actually don't package them. I have them in kind of like a treasure chest. This is an example of us to cry. So locally, it has my cities name on it. ST Pete, Florida on a bunch of different sea creatures. And I keep them in a box, and I've noticed that people really like to dig through it like a treasure test. And you kind of hear people going, you nodding. They find something new when they want to show their friend s. So that's a really effective way without having Teoh use packaging for the local sales. 9. Tips for Selling Stickers: So once you've created your stickers and figured out packaging, how do you sell him? I fell retail through, etc. And I do tons of local markets in my area. I live in Florida, so it's really beautiful weather all year round and or, you know, except in the summer, sometimes a little too hot to do outdoor markets. But most of the year there's great markets and people like to be outside, so that's a viable option for my business. If you live in Minnesota on, there's probably some indoor markets, but there might be a season for it, so you'll want to look for other venues or avenues to sell your stickers, so, etc. Uh, you need great product photography to sell anything on at sea on if you're already in XY cellar, you have heard that a 1,000,000 times. But just in case you haven't already, make sure you have 2 to 3 photos showing your sticker in use as well as in packaging. People also prefer that you show the scale of your product in both writing and in your photography. I often will put like 1/4 or a penny, or you know something that Everyone knows the size of next to a sticker because there could be misunderstandings. It's not visually clear, like someone might expect for to be a five inch sticker when it's a two inch sticker on. Even though it's a great product, there was a miscommunication, so you'll have a unhappy customer. Um, as for markets, check out with local to you, they can cost anywhere local markets between $50 to $300. In my experience for outdoor markets, you'll need a tent. It can be a big investment, and the truth is that markets are only as good as your fit with the customers. So if you're just starting out, I recommend trying an indoor market where you just need a table and a tablecloth in some things to display your work rather than doing like the big, big investment right off the bat, depending on where you're at in your business, so wholesale is a great option for selling your stickers as well. On the first thing to consider is who would buy your sticker? Where do they shop and hang out and approach those places to share your product? Um, generally, store owners don't love walk ins. Since you might be catching them in the middle of a busy work day or keeping them from helping customers, I find the best way to reach out is by sending or dropping off. A small package with a hand written note in two or three samples on an email could be a fine way to reach out as well, especially if it's not a local store. Um, and uh, when approaching wholesale clients, make sure that you're presenting your products as a great choice for them. I think these would really well in your store because of X, y and Z on their great fit for your customer. Because, uh, don't be afraid to follow up. I've gotten some big projects because I followed up with clients I've gotten. Thank you for keeping up with this from clients when they were just too busy with other things and it forgot. But they actually wanted to go through the sale, but I wouldn't follow up more than once in a few month period of time on. One important thing to keep in mind about wholesale is that you have been able to cut your retail prices in half so make sure you have an order minimum on for any wholesale orders minus minimum of mud, a minimum of $50 for first time clients and $100 for returning finds. The norm is actually to do it the other way around, so you have a more expensive initial purchase on. But I like to have the first sale be less expensive. So if someone's not sure it's a good fit, they they don't have to spend a lot of money they can get it didn't see if it's a good fit for their store, and if it is, then they'll come back and they'll go buy more orders. 10. Thank You: Thanks so much for taking this class. Don't forget to post photos of your stickers in our products gallery. I can't wait to see what you create. If you'd like to stay in touch with me. My instagram is Fox and Pro Paper Co. I always like to see what other artists are up to.