Stickers are undoubtedly the finest ornaments that you can paste on your belongings to liven up their appearance and, based on your childhood experiences, they will also contribute to brightening up your mood. Your journals, scrapbooks, portfolios, laptop covers, etc. can all be adorned with some of your preferred stickers to give them a unique look that makes them stand out from the bland ones owned by your friends.
With the chances of accidents always looming around the corner, waterproof stickers are always the safer alternative, ensuring that water spillage causes no smudges on your stickers. This also allows you to hold your objects using wet hands without having to worry about causing damage to your sticker’s look. With the availability of the silhouette cameo, you are now free to rapidly design, print, and cut your own waterproof stickers whenever you want, just by following a few straightforward steps.
Contents
Selecting The Type of Paper
It is the paper that will bring the water-resistant attribute to your stickers, so take a little time browsing for the right kind of sticker paper that matches your preference. If you want to use your normal printing paper for sticker cutouts, you can opt to laminate them later in order to make them more waterproof.
How To Get Images For Your Sticker
The Silhouette studio offers up to 50,000 images for users to choose from when printing. However, your choices aren’t bound to the app only, as you can also select images from other sites or even from your own personal gallery.
If your sticker is incorporated into words only, an image need not be selected as you can draw a textbox in your design area and use the fonts provided by the app to type out your words.
Designing Your Sticker
After going to the silhouette studio, select the top icon on the right-hand side menu bar. This opens three tabs; the first tab contains the page setup options, which allow you to customize your design area to your liking. For the machine option, select your printer. The cutting mat size should be 12 x 12 inches, which is the standard size of a cameo mat and change the media size to ‘letter’.
Then, choose the second tab. Tick the show grid option to help you better identify your printing area and help you with your cutting.
Upon clicking the next tab, turn on the registration mark and increase their thickness in order to assist your machine in identifying them. Remember to keep your images or texts within the three black registration marks on the corners of your page.
If you aim to print out a text sticker, this is the time to insert a text box on a blank canvas and type in what you want your sticker to say. Fonts and font size can be chosen from the countless options available, while the fill color can be used to determine the color of your text.
From the menu bar on the right, choose the little star icon that opens up the Offset panel and select the offset option. Adjust the distance to make sure your cut lines aren’t too far or in close proximity to your text. Push down on the apply button and notice a clear red cut line is formed surrounding your text. Keep in mind that everything bounded by the red line will be displayed on your sticker.
When you’re ready to print an image sticker, click the file button in the top left corner and then open it to find the image you want to use on your canvas. If you want to cut your image into a particular shape (e.g. rectangle, circle, oval), use the drawing tool to draw a shape around the image.
If, for any reason, you want the sticker to have an irregular shape (e.g. surrounding a certain character in an image), head over to the trace panel and activate the Select Trace Area button. With the cursor, draw a box around your image and you will notice that some parts get highlighted in yellow. Take some time to highlight all the parts that you want in your sticker by increasing the threshold; if some inner parts are not highlighted, press the trace outer edge button to make sure your cut lines only surround your image.
Upon close observation, you will notice a red line around your image. These will be the cut lines for your sticker. Select the red line and go to the offset option and adjust the distance to decide how much white space you want to allow around your image. Afterward, select the original cut line and hit delete.
A sheet of identical stickers can be made at once, by using the duplicate option from the duplicate panel on the menu bar. You have the power to choose how many stickers you want on your sheet by selecting the option choices presented.
Getting Your Sticker Ready for Cutting
In order to cut the sheet, draw a rectangle around your stickers to outline it and change its color from red to any other color. The difference in color between the cut lines allows you to set different cutting options on the different lines.
When you’re ready to print your stickers, go to the line tab and click the send button in the top right corner of your screen. For the lines surrounding your sticker, if you want only the upper layer of your sticker paper to be cut without cutting the adhesive bottom layer, for the red lines, change the material option to Sticker Paper, Kiss cut.
Completely cutting out the stickers can be achieved in two ways. You can either change the cut lines’ material option to Sticker Paper, White cut or you can go to the Simple tab and select the Cut Edge option.
Printing And Cutting
Next, you have to print your file. Check the print preview once again to make sure none of your images or texts are outside the registration marks. To get the best results, adjust your paper type (if your paper is glossy, set it to photograph or brochure, if it’s matte, choose plain paper) and print quality to high before you start printing.
Stick the sheet to your mat, feed it to the cameo and then go back to the silhouette app and press send after you have adjusted the force. The cameo scans the registration marks and identifies the cut lines, piercing through them to get your desired output.
Once this is done, your sticker-making process is over, and voila! You just made your very own stickers!
