All things stickers! How to make super awesome stickers for your kids

Making stickers is literally one of the TOP reasons I wanted to have a cricut. How fun is it to make customs stickers for any occasion! Any themed day you have you can add stickers. Christmas? Here are some stickers! Halloween – some spoooooky stickers! Going to a kids birthday party? Toss in a sticker sheet for a personalized element to the gift! It just adds sooo much to it!

There are TWO main parts to making DIY stickers – 1) the sticker design 2) the cutting process. I have detailed the different methods in each part below with tips to make your stickers awesome! The best part

Are your kids fully sticker obsessed like mine? I added in some fun sticker activities as well for longer lasting fun!

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Creating the sticker design

Choose your sticker designs!

This is such a fun part but also super difficult as many times we just don’t know where to start. There are a few main ways you can choose to design your own stickers:

Design Space: Go into design space and choose what images you want for your stickers and add them to the canvas. You can modify the image colours or remove parts you don’t like
- TIP: If you turn the image card over you can view the image set to get coordinating images! This makes the process super quick.
Design space community: Search the design space community for sticker sheets that are already made and ready to print. There are dozens of pre-made ready to print options that are super cute!
Design your own! This is the most advanced option but if you have a program like Procreate you can make any custom design you want
Free SVGs: Some craft bloggers have premade sticker sheets that are free downloads off their site. They are super cute and usually quite easy to bring into design space.

Cutting Sticker sheets

What do you need to make sticker sheets?

Printer
Sticker Paper: I use Cricut sticker paper but there are many on Amazon
Holographic Overlay: Optional. This takes your stickers over the top and makes the difference between homemade and handcrafted
Cricut machine (or scissors!)
Standard Grip mat
Brayer
XL scraper

Cutting a sticker sheet:

Make it fit: Once you have your sticker design created add a rectangle and make it the max size of the print and cut area (6.75″x9.25″) and change it to “Guide” (this way it wont print but is there to help size your project). Now arrange all of your images to fit within this space
Flatten: Select all images and choose the “flatten” option on the bottom right
- Note: sometimes I find it helpful to add a small offset to the images before flattening to ensure the stickers print well.

Calibration: Make sure you calibrate your machine for Print and cut. You can do this from the top let menu in design space. Don’t skip this step if this is your first time!
Print: The Cricut will send the image to your printer. I do find it is easiest to print sticker paper as the top sheet in a full tray of paper but you will have to figure out what works for your printer.
Holographic Overlay: I do like to add a holographic overlay to my designs as they make them more professional looking and usually more durable (waterproof etc.). I do this by using the hinge method and my XL scraper.
Cutting: Now this is the hardest part. I typically choose the ‘sticker paper’ setting with ‘more’ pressure. DO NOT EJECT IT. I usually send it through a second time because of the overlay. You do this by hitting the ‘C’ start button without ejecting the mat it will ensure it does another pass over the exact same cut line.
PRO TIP: You can go into your material settings and change the sticker material setting to do 2 passes by default so you don’t need to do this step.

DIY individual stickers

What do you need to make individual stickers?

Printer
Sticker Paper: I use Cricut sticker paper but there are many on Amazon
Holographic Overlay: Optional. This takes your stickers over the top and makes the difference between homemade and handcrafted
Cricut machine (or scissors!)
Standard Grip mat
Brayer
XL scraper

Cutting Individual stickers:

Make it fit: Once you have your sticker design created add a rectangle and make it the max size of the print and cut area (6.75″x9.25″) and change it to “Guide” (this way it wont print but is there to help size your project). Now arrange all of your images to fit within this space
Flatten: Select all images and choose the “flatten” option on the bottom right
- Note: sometimes I find it helpful to add a small offset to the images before flattening to ensure the stickers print well.

Easy Peel: if you want to make these stickers easy to peel (especially good for kids!) then add an offset to the images and duplicate it. Make sure the offset is white in colour and is set to ‘cut’. Then select all the layers and select ‘centre’ alignment.
Attach: Select attach for all three layers to ensure they all cut on the same page.
Calibration: Make sure you calibrate your machine for Print and cut. You can do this from the top let menu in design space. Don’t skip this step if this is your first time!
Print: The Cricut will send the image to your printer. I do find it is easiest to print sticker paper as the top sheet in a full tray of paper but you will have to figure out what works for your printer.
Holographic Overlay: I do like to add a holographic overlay to my designs as they make them more professional looking and usually more durable (waterproof etc.). I do this by using the hinge method and my XL scraper.
Cutting: Now this is the tricky part. When you go into the material selection go into your material settings, search for ‘sticker paper’ and change the sticker material setting to do 2 passes by default. Then select ‘sticker paper’ as your material (i usually choose more pressure). Once it is done cutting – DO NOT EJECT IT – send it through a second time because you want it to cut all the way through the backing sheet. To do this, you hit the ‘C’ start button without ejecting the mat it will ensure it does another pass over the exact same cut line.
Easy Peel: Since you cut this with an offset you need to weed out the offset in each sticker which will have a bit of the backing overlap the sticker so that it is easy to pull the stickers off

Making sticker sheets for Activities

Sticker tracing: get your Cricut to write an outline of your kids name and have them fill it in with matching letter stickers!
Counting with stickers: Have your kid match the number of stickers with the a number!
Sticker lines: have your toddler practice fine motor skills by tracing zigzap and loopy lines with stickers
Match by colour: Help your kids learn their colours by matching the same colour stickers to the colour on a picture.

Making my own stickers has been such a fun addition to my crafting addition! It is a great way to get the kids involved in crafting with me and makes a great activity. There are so many options to make with DIY die cut stickers, sticker sheets and themed stickers!

Looking for more? Check out which accessories you really need to get started!

Wondering where to buy a Cricut in Canada? Click here!

Happy Crafting!