Stickers are such a fun and cool thing and they’re super trendy! Did you know you can Make DIY Stickers with Tape of your own design with just a few simple materials? This is a fun craft and even a great way to create your own custom home decor or gifts. We used vintage graphics to create our homemade stickers we made a cool tattoo-inspired vase with them. This simple and easy tutorial will teach you how to make custom stickers with packing tape that you can use for all kinds of projects and is very budget-friendly!
Supplies Needed to Make Your Own DIY Stickers
To create your own stickers you’ll need a few simple supplies: Clear packing tape, scissors, A copy your image or artwork printed on a piece of paper (this should be water resistant ink with toner in it), a container of warm water, paper towels and/or parchment paper. If drawing your own design use water resistant pens and markers.
Why Packing Tape Stickers?
While you can use printer paper, or sticker paper for printing your own stickers on an inkjet printer, they unfortunately won’t be ad water-proof. Both techniques are great way to create your own stickers, but sticker paper can be expensive. Creating stickers with a piece of clear packing tape is not only cost-effective, but let’s you create a translucent sticker as well.
Getting Your Image for Your Stickers
The first thing you’ll need to know, how did you is how to create your image to make your sticker. You can do this and all kinds of programs, including Procreate, Adobe, Photoshop, or even hand draw it with markers or pencils to create your own drawings and take a picture of it with your cell phone. If you’re not as much into creating your own image, you can also grab vintage images or clip art from around the Internet that are royalty free to use. I always recommend the site the Graphics Fairy because they have a ton of really fun images that you can use. You can makes all kinds of custom sticker designs this way. Even if you don’t have Photoshop skills, you can do this on almost any photo program. You can even do this in Word by adding an image to a word document. TIP: You can draw your own stickers but make sure to use a permanent marker that are solvent-based, not water-based.
Have Your Images Printed Out on Matte Paper
For this technique to really work, you’ll need to have your images printed out on paper from the printer that uses toner. Inkjet printers will not work. Print your sticker images out on either a printer with toner like a copy machine, or send it to UPS store or or a printer so that it is printed on a laser printer. The biggest thing is the printer has to have water-resistant ink in it. For a fun activity, you can also make DIY Stickers with Tape with magazine pages and make stickers from those.
Once Your Images Are Printed-Cut Them Out
Use scissors to cut around the outside shape of the image. While regular scissors work well, using a specialty kind of scissors like manicure scissors help to get into tiny edges and areas. TIP: When cutting out your image, turn the image and not the hand cutting with the pair of scissors. It’s actually easier to cut out the image that way.
Add a Strip of Clear Tape to the Image
After cutting out your image, place a piece of packing tape over the image and smooth it out. If the image is bigger than the tape width to create a larger sticker, use multiple pieces to create a layer of packing tape and make sure to overlay the edges so they stick to each other where the pieces of tape meet. Pressed firmly to make sure the image is adhered to the strip of tape and any air bubbles are removed.
Place the Taped Images in Warm Water
Once your image is pressed firmly place it into the container of warm water, and let it sit for a moment so that the paper becomes saturated. Carefully start rubbing the paper off the back of the image to remove it. You may even find that the paper begins to peel off on it’s own slightly if it sits in the water long enough. Eventually, all you will be left is a clear image on the back. of your tape.
Let the DIY Stickers Dry on Top of the Parchment Paper
Lay the tape to dry sticky side of the tape up on a sheet of parchment paper, and it’s stickiness will return and your sticker is easy to use! If your packing tape sticker dries and has a white haze, place it back in warm water and continue to remove backing.
What’s the Best Way to Store Packing Tape Stickers?
Dry your stickers completely when they’re done and make them ready for you, so you can either keep them on wax paper, a piece of parchment paper, or even a silicone baking sheet for long-term storage. This will help you be able to use them so that they retain their sickness and you can move them easily for use.
Make Your Tattoo-Inspired Vase with a Recycled Bottle and Your DIY Stickers
We used vintage Valentine, Easter and Floral images from the Graphics Fairy to create the stickers for our fun, floral tattoo-inspired vase. This is a quick way to create something so pretty and custom with simple steps. Once your stickers are dry, take a clean, recycled bottle and begin to apply the stickers around the outside.
Start with the largest stickers first and then back-fill with the smaller stickers until you fill the outside of the bottle. This is a fun project for the decor and DIY enthusiasts and kids of all ages and so easy to make!
For more fun projects try making
–A DIY heart-shaped stamp
– Paper coffee filter flowers
-Yarn Fringe Pillow
