So you want to make stickers, but don’t know where to start or want ideas. Well I’ve got you covered! I’ve been baking stickers for 3 months so therefore I must be an expert. /s

Hence here’s a few beginner’s tip, because I’m still wet behind the ears too Anywho, enough chatter I’ll give you the run down of what I used to get started.

  1. Label paper
  2. A printer and ink or
  3. If you want to go old school– alcohol based markers or other waterproof medium, such as acrylic paint. Just avoid waterbased mediums like Crayola markers or watercolor.
  4. Scissors to cut the stickers. You can use a paper cutter if the edges are just straight lines though.

AND

  1. (Optional but highly recommended) Modge podge. Both the type that you can paint onto the stickers and a sprayable one.  Workable spray motif also works as a spray finish.
  2. Your sticker design, though I don’t think this is optional because what are you doing without one?
  3. If doing a digital art sticker is your route, photo editing software. The price of this varies from free to too much money. I personally use two paid $5 apps on my iPhone, Sketchbook Pro by Autodesk and Ibis Paint X. On my Macbook I use Gimp. I highly recommend Gimp even with its learning curve.

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So onto the tips part.

  1. Let your ink dry before using mod podge. I know this seems like a no-brainer but you’ll get excited to make it all shiny. Nothing is worse than smudges.
  2. When making a digital piece, opt out of lines that are too fine. Chances are you’ll be scaling your image to be smaller. You don’t want to lose lines.
  3. Aim not to have too many small curved detailed on the sticker. Use a border or frame it. If you’re cutting the stickers by hand using scissors, fine curves can be quite tedious to cut and usually don’t look as smooth.
  4. If you’re wanting to to sell your stickers online like on your own web store or Etsy or the like, consider making mockups for your sticker listing photos. I learned how to create some in Gimp by following this guy’s tutorial. If you know how to use Gimp, you’ll be fine. If you use Gimp on a Mac infrequently like me, you’ll have fun finding where “Alpha to Selection”.