So you want to learn how to make a sticker us mountain bikers, love our stickers, and here at IHT we make a lot of them. Not only do we stick them on everything we own, but for the last four years we’ve, made tens of thousands of stickers and ship them to over 80 countries from Canada to Norfolk Island and, to tell you the truth, I don’t even know where that is to let you in on a little secret here’s, how we make them and how you can here’s.
What you need the main tool is the cutter. We use the silhouette, cameo and yeah. It’s used by scrapbooking moms, but for 300 bucks it does the job. Aside from that, you ‘ Ll need vinyl, transfer tape, scissors, an exacto knife and a computer with silhouette studio which comes with the cutter.
I also like to refine my designs in Photoshop, but it’s, not necessary all right. Now let’s make a sticker. Firstly, you’ll want to make the design. This can be a simple image text or even handwriting.
I’m gonna make a dirt surfing sticker because there’s, nothing better than feeling surfy on your bike on some Brown POW, I’m gonna choose my favorite design, take a photo of it and place it In Photoshop, what you want is to clean the image up and make it black and white.
If you have a tablet, you can also design. With that keep in mind, the cutter can’t, do very intricate designs and you’ll, be peeling the negative space of the design manually, so you’ll want to keep it simple.
Once you have a clean image, you can bring it into the silhouette studio software. This software has a trace feature. You’ll need to use to make the outline to say vinyl I like to fill the full width of it.
In this case, I can fit three stickers at 3: inches apiece. You can plug the computer directly to the cutter or you can load the designs onto a USB stick and plug you’ll need to feed your vinyl into the cutter.
You can buy. Vinyl in strips varying in size, or if you want it in bulk, you could buy it in rolls, which is what we use. This cutter takes vinyl up to 12 inches in width, hit, send and let the cutter do its magic.
It doesn’t sound, very good, but don ‘ T worry that’s. Normal now comes the most time-consuming part you ‘ Ll need to do some, weeding, hey dude. What are you doing in the garden I’ve been outside all day and I still haven’t found a single sticker, a sticker yeah.
I was watching this YouTube tutorial today and this guy said the most time-consuming part of making a sticker is the weeding. Let me tell you he was right. I don’t think that’s, what they mean by weeding weeding come on guys.
I thought I told you not to weed without me all right back up back up. Let me explain what weeding really is weeding is the process of taking the excess vinyl off your sticker. This includes the negative space for this sticker.
I’ll, have to weed out the middle of the deed and the two R’s. Take your exacto knife and, at a 45 degree angle carefully, prick the vinyl and pull it off. I like to place the excess vinyl on my thumb.
Of course, this process is going to be different for every sticker and can be easy or difficult depending on your design. The ifhd bear logo, for example, has 11 pieces of vinyl to weed out, but since they’re all straight edges, it’s, pretty easy.
This could take a while, but it’s. Also pretty therapeutic. If you ask me, cut a piece of transfer tape around the same size as your sticker and place it on top there’s, different kinds of transfer tape.
You can get clear or tape like I’m using that has red lines to help apply it straight. Once a transfer tape is on apply pressure to the sticker. You may need to trim the excess tape. In that case, a cutting board will help.
You get straight edges, but if you don’t, have one scissors will do it’s time to stick our sticker, the smoother the surface, the better your sticker will stick. You ‘ Ll also want to make sure you wipe your surface and make sure it’s completely free of any dirt or dust carefully, peel the backing off.
So now you have the adhesive part of the vinyl exposed and apply your sticker, apply pressure to the sticker and make sure you get it all. Then remove the transfer tape and there you have it. If you want to take your vinyl cutting to the next level.
You can layer colors of different vinyl for stickers like this. This one has four different layers. Not only does vinyl look good, but it can serve as an extra layer of protection. Saving your bike from little scratches and dings now go get crafty and start sticking.
Those stickers everywhere, you