how i make stickers (all my tips, tricks, & tools!)

Hey guys, today I'm giving you all of the secrets for how I make my stickers. All of the tips and tricks and tools from the first sketches to my process for making the designs digital and even the sticker paper and the printer that I use. If you're interested in making stickers and don't know where to start, hopefully this will help you out. One more thing before we get started, I just wanted to let you guys know that this video is sponsored by Squarespace and they're the perfect place to go if you need a website, a domain, or even an online shop. I've been using them for years and I love them. I'll tell you a bit more about them later, but if you want 10% off your first purchase then you can go follow my link down below. The first step in making stickers is sketching out the designs. I almost always start my design process with an actual pen and paper, even if the final design is going to be digital. I just love the physical act of drawing on paper by hand. So in this tutorial, I'm going to be showing you how to turn your line drawings into flat vectorized images on the computer, which is the style that most of my stickers are in. I like to sketch my designs in pencil and then go over them with a fine point pen. My favorite paper to use is Bristol paper because it's so smooth and easy to draw on and it doesn't have any texture so it makes it easier when we're making the designs digital later on. So once the ink dries, then I'll erase all the pencil marks and the designs will be ready for the next step. When you have your designs all cleaned up, then you need to get them onto your computer. If you have a good scanner, you can use that, but I prefer to take a picture of my drawings with my camera and even your phone camera will do the job perfectly if that's all you have. So lay the drawing on a flat surface in an evenly lit area and then take a picture from directly above. And for this tutorial, I'm using my drawings that I did in my nature doodle video, so if you need some inspiration for just coming up with designs, then I'll have that video linked down below if you want to go check that out. After you've taken a photo of your drawing, then you're going to bring it into a photo editing program of your choice. So for this tutorial, I'm going to be showing you how to use Photoshop just because that's what I personally use. So bring it in and do your basic edits just to brighten the photo and lighten the shadows a bit. I've already done that to this just to save some time. So next, you're going to go up here, click on image, mode, and grayscale because we want this to just be a black and white line drawing. And then I'm going to use this marquee selection tool and select just the part of the drawing that I want. So if this whole image was a drawing, you could select the whole thing, but since I have done multiple drawings on one page, I like to work with one at a time. So I'm just going to select this one drawing first, and I'm going to copy and paste it to a new layer. So I'm going to hit command C for copy and command V for paste. And these are the Mac keyboard shortcuts, and they're just slightly different for Windows, I believe. So then I've copied and pasted that to a new layer. I'm going to duplicate it into a new document so I can just work with this image. Next, using the crop tool, I'm going to crop it down so it's only the drawing. And then we're going to start making the whites whiter and the blacks blacker. So to do this, go down here to your adjustments, click on levels, and then you're going to use these white and black eyedropper tools. So I'm going to select the white one, and I'm going to click on the image where I want it to be a bright white. And then with the black, I'm going to click where I want it to be a true black. And then I'm going to merge these together. And as you can see, that worked, but it's not perfect yet. So I'm going to go back and do that again. And I'm just going to do that a few more times until I get it perfectly white and black. So this looks pretty good. There are a few areas that are gray, but that's okay. It's pretty much just white and black. You really just want to make sure there's no spots in the background. You want it to be a pure white. So once you have that done, then we're going to select the whole image by hitting command A, and then copy that with command C. Then we're going to go over here to our channels and make a new channel, and then paste that layer on this alpha channel. Then we're going to click this button down here, which is the load channel as selection. And right now it's selected all of the white, so we want the black selected. So we're going to hit command shift I, which is the inverse selection, and that's going to select all of the black. Then click back onto the gray channel, go back to your layers, create a new layer, and then with your paint bucket tool and your black color, then just click on your image. And now you just have the black line drawing. So now you can save this as a PNG with a transparent background, and we'll bring this into illustrator. I've opened illustrator, and I've dropped in the file that I just created in photoshop. And this is where I'm going to turn this image into a vector, and smooth out the lines, add some color, and just make it look a little bit nicer. But you could just stop with photoshop if you don't have illustrator. You can just make your line drawing in photoshop, and then use that. But if you have illustrator, here's how I do this. So I've brought in the file, and you're going to click embed. And then we're going to use this image trace tool to turn this into a vector, and make the lines smoother. So click image trace, and now it's a vector. So if yours doesn't turn out like this, or it doesn't look exactly how you want it to, you can go up here and go to the image trace settings, and change these until you get the look that you want. These are the settings that I have played around with, and found work best for my drawings. You can screenshot this, or write these down if you want to use these same settings, and see if they work for you. But just play around with some of these tools, and they'll alter how the lines look, and how thick they are, or how they interact with each other. So once you've traced your image, then click up here, click expand, and then right click, and ungroup. Click off just to deselect it, and then click a white area on this image. And then select same fill color, and it's selected everything that's filled in with white. And then just hit delete on your keyboard, and now you're left with just the black lines. And now you can group it again if you want, just so it stays together. And then you can go in and add your color. So I like to use the blob brush tool, and you can select whatever color you want. And I like to do the color on a separate layer, and make sure that layer is underneath the black line drawing, so it shows up under the lines. And then you can start filling it in. This is my favorite part, just because it's like coloring in a coloring book. It's really relaxing to just sit here and add the color. If your colors come out as gray, or shades of gray, that's probably because your document is in grayscale mode, because that's what we set it as in photoshop. So just go to your color panel, and select CMYK, and you'll be back in color. And to color in my images, I like to use my Wacom drawing tablet. It's just easier for me to use a pen than my mouse or my trackpad, and I'll have it linked below if you want to check it out. I it works perfectly well for what I need it to do. So next we'll do, if I'm turning this into a sticker sheet, and then I'll arrange them in illustrator in a new document as a sticker sheet, what I want it to look like when I print it out. Here's an example of one that I've already done. I've given you guys a few little sneak peeks of this sticker sheet in my last couple of videos, but I will just lay it out on a four by six rectangle, because that's how big my sticker sheets are, and I'll add my logo, and just arrange them how I want them to look. And then I will save this as a jpeg, and then bring it into my silhouette program. Whatever cutting machine you have, it's going to come with its own program to set up your documents to be cut. So I personally have the Silhouette Cameo 2, and unfortunately I don't think they sell this exact version anymore, because they've made a newer model. But I love my Silhouette Cameo, so if you're in the market for a cutting machine, I would recommend looking into this. But of course there's lots of other ones too, so just do your research and see which one best fits you. But in this tutorial, I'm going to be showing you how to use the Silhouette program, because that's what I have. So I've brought in my sticker sheet, and the first thing I'm going to do is draw a rectangle with rounded edges for the outlines of the sticker sheet. And to make this the exact size that I want, go up here to the scale option, and I'm going to unlock this, and I'm going to set it as four by six. Apply, and then position that so it's exactly where I want it to be cut. Next, we need to make the lines for the stickers to be cut. So to do this, go up here to this tool, which is their trace tool. Click select trace area, and then I'm just going to select this whole thing. So with this, you have to kind of play around with it. Some images will be easier to trace than others, but you want it to be as much yellow filling in each of these as possible, because it's going to trace the outside edge of those. So you can just play around with these different settings until you get the most yellow that you can without it going outside the lines like this. And I'm going to click trace outer edge. So now as you can see, it has traced the outside of all of these shapes. So go up here to offset, and if you have your line selected, then you can just click offset, and you can make this as big as you want. I usually do around 0.035, and then I make this a different color just so I can keep track of it. And then as you can see, it's created a larger blue outline around all of the images. So then I'm just going to click back on the first red trace line and delete that because I don't need that. This blue line is what is going to be cut, and then I'm going to delete the blue line that ended up around my logo just because I don't want that to be a sticker. When you've created all the cut lines, then you'll need to print this out. So you'll just go up here and click send a printer, and if you're wondering, I use a canon pixma mg 3220 printer, and I really like it. So if you are interested in checking it out, I'll have it linked down below. And then when you're ready to cut this, you'll go over here and you can do your cut settings. So depending on what paper you use, the cut settings are going to be different. I use online labels, recycled white paper, and I love their paper. So if you're interested, I will have their link down below where you can go check them out. They have lots of different options for sticker paper, but I personally use the recycled white. So to cut, go over to advance, and then we have these two cut lines. So we're going to do two rounds of cutting. The first time, we're not going to do this red layer, which is the outside. We're going to do that last. Right now, I just want to do the actual stickers. So just select that, and then I just scroll down at the bottom of the material type and click white sticker paper. And then like I said, your cut settings will differ depending on your machine, or what blade you're using, or what paper you're using. So you're really just going to have to play around with it and see what works best for you. These are the settings that I found personally work with my machine, my blade, and the paper that I buy, but you can play around with it and see what works for you. The kiss cut is what you're going to do first with the sticker images, and this will just cut the first layer of the sticker paper so that the sticker will peel off of the backing. And then the full cut will cut through the entire paper, which is what you're going to do for this outer cut layer, and this will cut your actual sticker sheet out. And then when you're ready to send this to your machine to be cut, then you just click up here and click start. Mine's not currently plugged in. If you have any questions on how to make stickers or something that I might have left out of this video, feel free to leave me a question down below and I'll do my best to get back to you. And I quickly wanted to mention Squarespace again since they are sponsoring this video. Like I said in the beginning, they're the best place to go if you need to create a website, a domain, or an online shop. They're pretty much a one-stop shop for all of your website designing needs. I love them because they have these customizable templates that make it so easy to create the website of your dreams. There's no need to hire anybody to build a website for you because you can use Squarespace and create a really nice professional looking website all by yourself. So like I said before, you can follow my link down below to get 10% off your first purchase with them or use the code JORDANCLARK. I really hope that you try them out and enjoy using them as much as I do. As always, I hope you're having a wonderful day and thank you so much for watching this video. I cannot wait to see you in my next one!