Stickers are a fun and versatile way to express your creativity for crafting or scrapbooking or promote your business or brand. Whether you’re looking to add a personal touch to your belongings or create marketing materials for your business?

Being able to make your own custom stickers can be a fun and rewarding experience. And with Canva, a popular graphic design platform, creating custom stickers has never been easier.

What Is Canva?

Canva is a graphic design platform that allows users to create a variety of visual content, including presentations, posters, stickers, social media graphics, and more. Canva offers both free and paid plans. The free plan provides basic features, while the paid plan offers more advanced features and templates.

What Materials Do You Need To Make Your Own Stickers?

• Laser Printer or Inkjet Printer, (Make sure you calibrate your printer to your Cricut before using for the first time, you will find the calibration button by clicking on the 3 lines next to CANVAS in the top left corner of Design Space)
• Glossy sticker printer paper, printable vinyl
• Cricut Maker, Brother Scan N Cut, Silhouette or xTool

Start With An A4 Document In Canva

Click on the top left hand side of the search bar and click create deign. A drop down box will appear, here you can choose A4. You will be taken to an A4 page ready to start creating your homemade stickers.

Add A Custom Word To Create A Themed For Your Homemade Stickers In Canva

I usually start with a word, you don’t have to use a word but it’s how I start to form my theme. See my love theme to get more of an idea. Once you have a word, (I used Archive Black font) for this word. Decide on the size of your stickers. I usually make the first letter bigger, of course this is personal choice.

Decide On A Colour Scheme For Your Canva Stickers

Now it’s time to decide on a colour scheme for your homemade stickers. I have to say I am a sucker for pastels and brights! Colour each letter a different colour or choose a main colour for the overriding theme. And here’s the exciting thing, you can choose any colours you like, this is your creation.

Choose Your Images And Re Colour Your Homemade Stickers

Next go to the Image bar in the right hand side and click on elements. This is where you will find shapes and images for your home made sticker designs. You can see below in this search for rainbows it brings up all available images. The ones with the crown are part of Canva Pro, if there is no crown or pound sign they are free to use.

Edit the Colors

Once you have selected your first image, head to the top bar to see if you are able to edit the colours. If you can, a mini colour bar will pop up; these represent the colour of the different layers. Click on any colour to change the colour of that layer.

Think About Your Sticker Layout?

Once you are happy with the layout of your stickers, you can think about how they will print and cut. These stickers were printed quite large; I could have made them smaller.

These are ok if you are cutting out by hand, but if you plan to print and cut on Cricut you will need some sort of outline and background. To do this simply head to to the element section in the left hand bar and select a shape. These can be dragged to change the size and shape.

Position your shape over the word, right click to get the actions bar below and click layer, you can now move your layer backwards to sit behind the words a create base.

Save Your Custom Stickers?

Finally when you are happy download your stickers. If you are going to cut our by hand keep the background white and download as a PDF. However if you want to upload these images to Cricut you will need to think about the background.

If I upload this set of stickers to Design Space when I use the background remover, it will also remove the off white background from my word stickers. However, if I change the background to grey? As there are no grey images the background remover will only remove the grey layer. You need to save this as a PNG file. Note, if you have Canva Pro Version there is the option to remove the background transparency before you download your stickers. 

Uploading Your Stickers To Cricut Design Space

To upload your stickers to Design Space. Start a new project and click upload in the bottom of the left-hand bar. Click upload and find your sticker set. You will now be brought to this window. Select complex and you will be taken to the background remover window.

Removing The Background

The next window will allow you to remove the background, simply click on the background and it will disappear. However, do be mindful of any letters, check out the P and A you will need to click on those get areas to remove them.

Choose How To Save Your Stickers In Cricut Design Space

Next you are able to choose how to save your home made stickers. You need to click the print and cut option. This will now save your stickers to Cricut Design Space under you images or stuff.

Create An Offset On Your Homemade Stickers

Once uploaded to your design area, you can add an offset to your stickers. It finishes off the design and looks more professional. Click the offset tool on the top bar and set the distance at 0.03! But do make sure none of your stickers overlap.

Send Your Stickers To Print And Cut

Now click make it, your stickers will appear in a preview screen, choose your settings. I usually use the printable vinyl setting so my stickers kiss cut the vinyl.

Load your printer with the sticker paper. Print your design using your printer. Make sure to select the highest quality print setting and set your printable material’s size correctly. Click on the system dialogue button to see the printer settings; you will want to change this to fine or best. If the box doesn’t appear, reduce design space, and the box will be behind it. Now press print.

Print and Cut Your Stickers

Select the correct material setting on the Cricut machine. This will ensure that the machine cuts your design at the right depth and speed.

Press the “Go” button on your Cricut machine, and it will begin to cut your design.

Once the machine has finished cutting your design, unload the cutting mat and remove your finished project from the mat and remove the excess sticker paper to reveal your stickers. Or alternatively, use a guillotine to remove the black guidelines from the edge.

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