Making Stickers!

I've actually been (extremely inconsistently) making stickers for almost a year! I originally bought some sticker paper off of Amazon and made my first set of stickers around December/January. I didn't touch the sticker paper between then and now, but I've been having a lot of fun experimenting with stickers recently!  While the option of getting stickers printed through a manufacturer saves a lot of time and stress, the profit margin from printing at home is significantly larger. Going through a manufacturer generally means the more you order, the cheaper the cost per item is, and a lot of websites require a fairly large order amount.  

From what I've seen, the cost per sticker would be around $1USD/ea., versus in printing at home, the cost to make stickers goes down to around $.40/ea. (paper is around 20 cents per sticker, obviously depending on size, and it's kinda hard for me to factor in ink cost, so this is just an estimation!). 
This might not seem like the biggest price difference on a small scale, but when you realize you can be dropping $100 for 100 stickers through a manufacturer, or you could instead spend $40 to print 100 at home. Being able to print stickers at home offers the very convenient option of printing small batches, as well, which saves me from having too much of a specific sticker design, and being stuck with a lot of extra stock. 

I don't have any experience going through a sticker manufacturer, but the prices alone are what turned me away, as it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to be buying so much stock when I don't have an established store yet. I'm sure a lot of places run specials/deals that lower the manufacturing cost, but I'm happy to be printing at home for the time being! Printing at home adds a lot more labor, but the benefits of being able to run test prints to double check colors/sizing and printing small batches easily outweighs that for me. 



I only recently printed and cut my first "big batch" of stickers, which consisted of the "dessert cats" stickers that I previously made. I did 5-6 of each of the designs (5 in total), making this print and cut session easily the largest I had done thus far (other times I did ~10 stickers at a time in total, versus ~30 this time around). The dessert cats were actually the first stickers I ever printed, but this time I went ahead and made them each ~1" larger, as I realized I wanted them to be bigger. 



Pictured to the left is from my very first batch of stickers, and on the right is the most recent batch. As you can see, there's a huge size difference, and I am much happier with the new ones!  In hand cutting ~30 stickers, I learned there's no way I can consistently cut large batches of stickers by myself, so yesterday I invested in a Cricut Explore Air 2! 
I had to order it online, and it isn't expected to arrive until late this month, but I'm really excited to get it.  I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say on Cricuts/sticker making as a whole once I get settled into using the Explore Air, so I'll absolutely keep you guys updated! 



Pictured above is the sticker paper I've been using! I purchased a pack of the Royal Elements glossy white paper, as well as a pack of their transparent paper. I'd be interested to try their matte paper in the future, as well, but I'd rather keep things as consistent as possible for the time being, and I think I'd end up preferring the glossy paper anyways. I'm also not a huge fan of the transparent paper - I've done a sheet's worth of stickers using this kind, and white there is nothing wrong with the quality, I prefer the glossy paper.  
This leaves me with 19 sheets of unused transparent sticker paper... so in order to get rid of it, I'll probably pick a couple of sticker designs to only offer in transparent paper for a while just to use it, rather than waste the paper. I have really enjoyed using the glossy paper - I've used 9 of the 10 sheets that came in the pack, and I haven't had a single issue with them up to this point. I'll probably stick with this brand for printing stickers, as the paper is a very pretty and durable vinyl, and it's at a fairly nice cost point. 

Aand if you've made it this far into the post... here are some pictures of Aslan, and Fiora (who I haven't shown on any of my social medias yet!!) with their respective stickers! 



If you watch my Youtube videos, you've probably seen Aslan a handful of times now, but here's a little peek of Fiora! I mentioned in my last Patreon post that I have a new kitty, and here is a quick look at her. I originally had made a "tortoiseshell torte" sticker themed after a standard colored tortie, but recently I decided to change it to a dilute tortoiseshell to match Fiora. I have to go back in and add more orange/cream onto her sticker, because in printing, a lot of that was lost. My next Youtube video will be talking about both Aslan and Fiora, so if you are interested in hearing me talk about my children for 10+ minutes, stay tuned for that!! 

If you guys have any questions about sticker making/my process/etc., please let me know below! I still have a lot to learn, especially once my Cricut arrives, but it's been a lot of fun making them.  
♡  Chrissy