How to Turn Your Illustrations Into Die-Cut Stickers

1. Welcome: Hi, I'm Nina, an illustrator designer and so printmaker based in Belgrade, Serbia. And in this class, I want to show you how I make and prepare my stickers for printing. The process is super easy to follow, and it will come in handy if you're planning to turn your illustrations into custom die cut stickers like these ones. You'll create your illustrations in Procreate or Photoshop and set up the printing file in Adobe Illustrator. This class is beginner friendly, and all you need is a basic knowledge of these programs. Alright, let's get started. 2. Project: Mm hmm The project for this class is to create a sticker illustration or use an existing one and prepare it for printing and cutting. I'm always looking forward to seeing what you create, so feel free to share your work in the class project section. 3. Illustration in Photoshop: Okay, this is going to be Step one. You can now create a sticker illustration or use an existing one. I drew mine in Procreate, but once I finish, I usually like to open it in Photoshop to continue with the setup. I find it easier, but you can also do all of this in Procreate. As you can see, the illustration is in layers, but now I need to turn it into a die cut sticker, meaning when it's printed, it will also be cut on a machine in a custom shape. So I now need to specify that cut line. The cut line can be a simple square, rectangle, or a circle. But in this case, I want it to have a custom shape. So to do that, I need to create the silhouette of the entire illustration shape. And you can do that by drawing it in procreate in another layer on top. But in this case, I already have it as the background layer. So I'm going to use that. I will just copy it, Command C, and paste it in place Shift Command V. I will put it on top and I will change its color to black. I'll just select solid color Black. Then right click Create Clipping mask, and now I can hold Shift to select both layers and Command E to merge them. That's it. The silhouette is created. Now, before we continue, another thing to note here is the canvas size I'm using. As you can see, it is very close to the edge of the illustration. I don't want to have a lot of empty space around it once I save it as a PNG. Okay. Now we will export this as two different PNGs. First of all, I will turn off the background so I have a transparent background, and I will turn off the silhouette. So first of all, I will export the final sticker illustration as it is. I'll go to File, Export, export as. I'll make sure it's PNG and that the background is transparent. Okay. This one will be the main one. Now for the next one, I can turn off the illustration layers and just turn on the silhouette. Again, I'll go to File, Export export as PNG with transparency, and let's name this one outline. This is it for the first step. You can basically do all of this in Procreate. I just find the process to be easier to navigate in Photoshop, especially when I'm saving a lot of sticker illustrations. Next step is in Illustrator. 4. Sticker Setup in Illustrator: In this step, I'll show you how to easily prepare die cut stickers for printing in Adobe Illustrator. I already placed two PNGs we saved. They're on top of each other, and you can see that once I turn one off and then on again. It is best that they stay aligned like this. So first of all, I want to create the outline around the illustration. That's where it will be cut. I will now lock the illustration image so I don't move it accidentally, and I will select the black silhouette. Now, in this upper menu, you can see image trace. I will click that. I will click this icon so I can see the image trace menu. Now, here in advance options, I will select Ignore color. And if I don't like what I'm seeing as the results, I can play with these settings. But since everything is fine, I can just click Expand. Okay, this is now a group, but it's a group for no reason. I can just ungroup it, Shift Command G. And you can see that once I zoom in, there is a lot of rough edges in the silhouette. And that's because I drew it with a textured brush in procreate. But since I'm creating a cut line for the machine, I want to make sure everything is smooth. So to fix that, I will use a smooth tool. You can find a smooth tool here in the menu. It's always behind a sharper tool, so you will just select it. Now, let's go back to this object, select it, and then select the smooth tool. Once you do that, this little window will pop up and you can drag this to smooth everything out. It will basically smooth out the entire shape. I just want to smooth it out a bit. Then another option, in case you have just a specific part you want to smooth out, you can just simply press on it and drag it. All right. Once that's done, I can select the shape and turn it into an outline. In this menu, you can just click on the arrow and it will switch the positions, the background will be off and you'll just have the outline. I will change the outline color to pink, and I will set it to 0.25 PT. You can now see that this now follows illustration nicely, but what we need is to place it further away from it. If I just scale it up manually, it wouldn't be correct. So to do this task, we need something called offset path. The outline is selected, and I will go to object. Path and select offset path. I will set it to 0.2 centimeters and click Okay. From my experience, this is the minimal size I'd recommend. When they cut it, they can make small errors. You can also make it bigger than 0.2 centimeters to be safe. Now I will again select the main outline, the first one I made, and create another offset path. Let's go to object path. Offset path. This time, I want to make it bigger, so it will be 0.3 centimeters. I will delete the first one I made, and we're now left with only two outlines. I will rename this outline to cut and the other one to background. The cut outline will stay as it is, and the background outline will become a solid color. So again, I will make the switch, and let's select some color. Now I can put the background at the bottom so you can see what's happening. On top, we have a cut line. In the middle, we have the illustration image, and at the bottom is a background that extends outside the cut line. Why do we need this? You might ask? Well, we're always thinking about small cut errors that can happen. For example, the machine cutting half a millimeter off center. So basically, we're extending the background color in case that happens. And if it does, the background will still be included. If you have a plain white background, you don't need to do this. The sticker paper is already white. All right, I'll now just change my background to an off white color, the same one I used on the horse. I can unlock the illustration and group illustration and background in one group. And then I can group everything with the cut mine on top and name this M. And that's it. The sticker is ready for printing. But before you send this file to be printed, you also want to make sure you embed the PNG files. If you don't receive an empty file. Now if I go to Links Window, I can see it here. It's just a Link. In case you don't have it open, just go to Window and then find Links. Now what we're going to do is click on this burger menu. And click Embed Images. You can see now that the link icon has disappeared and the image is embedded. That's it. You can now save this as an Illustrator file and send it to the printing company. 5. Print File: Lastly, I just want to quickly show you how my print file looks. The size of the ardbard will depend. You have to inquire at the print shop about this and they'll tell you the correct size you can use to place your stickers. This is how mine looks. I tried to fit as many stickers as I could while leaving the space between them that is at least 5 millimeters. You can see that each sticker is in a separate group. And when I open one, the cut line is on top, and then inside the group, I have the image and at the bottom, the background. It's important that the cut layer is visible and named so that the print shop can set everything up on their end for printing and cutting. 6. Final Thoughts: Mm hmm hmm that's it. You've made it till the end. I hope you found it useful. It's a very quick and easy process. All you need to do now is make a selection of illustrations you'd like to turn into stickers and follow these steps. By the way, I'd love to see what you're making, so feel free to share your progress and final stickers in the project section of this class. As always, to get notified about my next classes, you can follow me on Skillshare. And if you want to keep in touch, you can find me on Instagram at DOD. I'm sending you lots of love and good vibes, and I'll see you in the next one.