Hey guys.
This is probably my first tutorial on this blog, but lots of people on my Instagram have been bugging me about my stickers. I have made a couple of stickers in the past, and they’ve all been alright. Here’s a set of “Kill la kill” stickers I’ve made.
Kill la kill stickers I made and cut out 😀
I guess they turned out alright, but I wasn’t very good at printing stickers yet. There were many problems, but I’ll help you all clear the problems whilst in the process of making stickers!
Things you need: Sticker paper, Laptop, Tablet (optional, to draw the stickers), Printer
How I make stickers (at home).
Step 1) Design.
You want to make a sticker?
First off you have to figure out what you want to print, what sort of stickers you want to make. They shouldn’t be too big, so keep the designs simple. For example, I want to make a sticker sheet of… Let’s say… Cute ghosts. I would sketch out and doodle some random ghosts on Adobe Illustrator, which is a program I use to draw in. So my first designs are something like this.
First design?
Cleaned up design
Honestly, I don’t really like it; It’s quite messy. So I clean up the design and made it more… “Cuter”.
Yes. That’s more like it.
I also made a couple more ghosts right beside it. I’m aiming to make around four ghosts? To fill the sticker sheet.
Pink cheeks :>
Step 2) Add colour.
This looks a little bit too plain, so I would add a little bit of colour to the tiny ghost. Maybe a bit of… Pink? It would make the design less plain. But too much colour might not be good for this design, for I planned for the stickers to be white ghosts.
Pink cheeks make everything cuter.
Finalized design
Step 3) Finalize your design.
On the right, is my final design. Four Japanese ghosts. I really like it. (By the way, “frouds” is my signature for my artwork and such.) I will now be ready to print it.
The next few steps I am doing are for Mac, so apologies to Windows and Linux users (for I do not know how to do it on other operating systems).
Step 4) Print.
I have planned to make tiny sticker prints, so I placed about four of the designs on the same sheet of paper. Four pages, with four designs on each. I export it as a PDF, and get ready to print. I open the PDF in Preview, and click File>Print. Something like this should then pop up.
Click on “Preview”, which should have a drop down selection box. Select “Print Settings”. It will lead you to the next step. When you click “Print settings”, the settings should change to something like this.
Select on “Media type”, and change from “Plain Paper” to “Other Photo Paper”. This setting will make the ink print slower, and the prints not smudge on the sticker paper (Only do this setting if your sticker paper is a glossy type of sticker paper, it will help the ink not smudge. But if your sticker paper’s texture is similar to regular paper, then select Plain Paper; it’s fine). This is where the sticker paper comes in. Stick your choice of sticker paper in the printer, and print.
It should take a while, if you are printing with the selection of “Other Photo Paper”. My printer is the Brother MFC-J430W, and it took me around 15-20 minutes to print four sheets of paper. It turned out alright. (Warning: Some printers might print the ink lighter than the actual image, so if you want your colours to be exact, you should try making the image a little darker in brightness before printing.) I then cut out the sheets; from one A4 sized paper to four small pieces. The result was quite well, and I have given some to my friends today at school.
The final result! Turned out alright. Size of sticker sheet is compared with Copic markers.
Although this is a sticker sheet, it means you must cut out the images yourself. To apply to books, computers, anything; all you have to do is simply take the sheet and cut out the shapes, and just peel. I hope this tutorial has helped you in any way, and thanks for reading.
– Mint
I like to call myself as one), and I like to do minimalistic designs. Y’know, those designs without the lines, just colours that contrast each other and help form different shapes and things. So I simply am just attracted to designs that are obviously simple, and minimalistic. I’ve probably had just taken an interest in minimalism very recently, because when I was younger I really, simply loved the theme “Freshy”. I’d use it for all my blogs. And if you are wondering, I’ve been on WordPress around… Four? Five years? Somewhere around that.
Mint S. 
