Stickers

We make most of the stickers in our store at home.

I am personally not anal about stickers I make, buy, and use being weatherproof for 50 years laminated with the thickest industrial plastic. And the weather and sun destroy everything no matter how tough it is. I've seen store-bought professional stickers fade and turn blue in a year!

I sorta LIKE when stickers will eventually fall off, disintegrate into nothingness, and die. Plus less plastic in the world.

Most homemade/handmade stickers inkjet are not going to be totally waterproof anyways. I've found with most laminates + paper combos I've tried, water eventually seeps into the sides and melts the color on the edges. You're gonna have better indestructible results with outsourcing to professional sticker printers with $10,000 machines.

You can also directly draw/paint on label paper to make stickers. This article will focus on printing stickers from a file, so you can have multiple designs to give to your friends.

1. Print sticker on sticker paper. (currenty use koala)
2. Cut stickers with plotting machine (currently use silhouette)
3. ???
4. Stick the sticker.

There are two main types of printers: Inkjet and Laser.

Inkjet is what you'll see for sale most of the time in stores, because they make bank on selling ink refills rather than the machines. They use either dye or more expensive pigment based ink. Dye-based ink will go runny underwater, while pigment ink is more solid. It's easier to get decent looking color blending with inkjet in my experience.

Laser is what you'll see at most offices, copy shops, and print shops. They use powdery toner for printing, and the noxious powder can and will find its way into your lungs if you use it in a tight, closed enviroment. It's harder to find a good cheap laser printer, because the cheap ones are often lower DPI and streaky/obviously halftoned with color. Laser printed stickers are usually waterproof ENOUGH. Because the color does not run like dye-based inkjet.

Most consumer-level printers cannot print white ink (necessary for special effects like partial holo), or UV resistant ink. So DIY stickers with printers under $1000 will rarely be as durable as professionally printed stickers.

We personally use a Canon ip8720 (~$200 when we bought it), because it's one of the more budget-friendly options with more than 4 CMYK ink tanks (it has 6!). I've found the colors satisfactory, not as bright as the screen of course, and the ink doesn't immediately run off if it gets wet. We've had some stickers go through the dishwasher a couple of times without dying - though I still wouldn't recommend putting DIY stickers in the wash. We buy off-brand ink, which discolors faster in the sunlight than the official ink - but everything discolors in the sun eventually.

We've previously used a Canon Pixma Pro 100 (~$500 after rebate), and loved it very much before a lightning storm fried it. It has 8 color tanks (more than the default CMYK!), and I found that it printed my bright magentas and blues very beautifully. I didn't even have to convert my digital art to CMYK, it prints from RGB pretty well! This type of printer is out of stock, but they have modern versions like the Pixma Pro 200, 300, and so forth that should have similar capabilities.

I've heard good things about the Epson Ecotank series as well, though I've never tried them myself.

If you are going to choose your own printer, here's some specifications to look out for with inkjet printers:

• How many color tanks? CMYK = 4 by default. The more color tanks, the easier it is to match colors to your screen.
• How easy is it to find ink refills? I've heard some Canon Pixma 200's are very difficult to find even official ink for, and you'll have to pay out the ass for a few prints, for example. Some other models can be jail-broken to accept manually refilled cartridges, though this voids the warranty.
• How big can it print? 8.5×11 is the default for USA copy paper size. 13×19 is the biggest format I've seen for cheap ($200). You may want to print really huge things, who knows!
• Does the brand have shitty “protection” like HP and Brother that only allows you to use official NEW inks with some stupid chip to scan whether it's good enough to use?
• How big/heavy is the damn thing? The Canon Pixma series will take up an entire table by itself, and I'm a scrawny weakling who needs help to move it around.
• Also, try to buy single-purpose printers, rather than all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machines. The all-in-one machines will often do each thing in worse quality, and if one part of it breaks you can't use the other functions.

If you have a copy shop near you, they usually have good enough color laser printers and might have label paper OR let you use your own paper to print on. The last time I did this was in like 2013 and it was maybe a dollar or two per page, then I hand-cut the stickers.

I had a cheap $100 black/white Brother printer that I experimented with printing zines and stickers. I found the DPI rather low, and the dot effect CAN be cool but it can also just look fuzzy with my heavy-handed inky art style. But hey the stickers didn't run in the wash! :P

Thermal printers are usually used to print labels for shipping packages. I have a $150 MUNBYN, for example, that has served me well for years for the label printing purpose. But labels ARE stickers! They only print black on (whatever color your label is), but they can be cool and quick punky stickers! The resolution on these are often very low because they're meant to print text-only, so you'll see visible halftone dots and fuzzy lines. So I wouldn't really sell these stickers. But they're fine for fun and giving away to friends.

If you have money to drop, I've heard good things about Zebra brand thermal printers for labels. They're tough and rustic, and don't come in girly colors like pastel pink.

The process is simple, but selecting the materials takes a bit more work. Homemade stickers won't be completely waterproof 90% of the time unless you invest in heavy machinery.

Most any label or sticker paper will do. Label paper is meant for temporary uses (like mailing labels!) so they won't be the most durable. Sticker paper that's labeled as “vinyl” material is more durable and slightly more waterproof.

There are a couple different finishes of sticker paper:

• Matte: I consider this “standard”. It feels nice and smooth, and works best with traditonal art or light/pastel colors. It won't look the best with deep black areas though, they will always look grayer than they should
• Glossy: I don't like this texture. It feels sticky in a bad stim way. But it will absorb deep black areas better than matte paper.
• Semi-gloss: I like this better than glossy texture. We use this for art with digital colors, high saturation, or a lot of deep black areas.
• Satin/Luster: This is the holy grail for me. I found some paper from A-Sub brand years ago, but they've been sold out since. They have a nice texture that reflects the blacks well, and doesn't feel sticky like glossy paper.

We currently use Koala brand sticker paper, for their matte and semi-gloss finishes. Some people don't like Koala sticker paper because the backing says “label paper” and that ruins their branding. I don't really care.

• Some people swear by onlinelabel's weatherproof paper.
• More suggestions for sticker paper brands, mostly on Amazon: https://www.thewestcoastkraeers.com/craft-supplies/paper

We don't always use lamination for our stickers. Sometimes if we feel fancy we laminate them. Lamination helps protect the print if they're going to be touched a whole bunch, and it feels better to the touch than regular sticker paper.

• Oraguard 215 is most recommended for its durability and UV resistance: https://creativecraftvinyl.com/shop/printable-vinyl/oracal-uv-laminating-film-oraguard-215/
• Oraguard 210 is decent for its pricing: https://creativecraftvinyl.com/shop/printable-vinyl/oracal-oragaurd-210-laminate/
• You can also try any Avery or Scotch cold laminate.
• We use whatever holographic laminate that's on Amazon for shiny effects.
• I've found that hot lamination sheets that require a machine are too thick. Because of the added thickness (3mm for our glossy, 5mm for our matte), they're unable to flex around round surfaces and can't stick anymore. Your mileage may vary if you've found a brand that works.

You can start out hand-cutting your stickers, but this takes a lot of time and will hurt your wrists eventually.
Eventually you'll want to upgrade to a machine that cuts your stickers. We only have experience with the small Silhouette Portrait, and we find it satisfactory for our needs. I hear Cricut software is less user-friendly, but it's what's most common in IRL stores.

Occasionally you may NEED industrial grade stickers to put on your car or water bottle or something. Here's some printers I know of:

Don't use Stickermule cuz they'll spam your inbox with awful political propaganda, and their acrylic charms are very poor quality.

• An Idiot's guide for making good stickers