Design PERFECT Stickers with Your Cricut in MINUTES!

Hi, it's Ann from The Useless Crafter, and today I'm going to show you how to make stickers. So this is a special request. Well, actually, she doesn't know it, but I'm doing it for her anyway. We're going to make baseball stickers because, of course, opening day is coming up, so whether you want softball stickers, baseball stickers, any team sport stickers, we all need them for our water bottles and our helmets, apparently. So we're going to do that from scratch, sort of. I'm going to show you a few different things that I do. So let's get started. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. All right. First things first, if you have noticed, if you've dabbled a little bit into sticker making and you're trying to use a screenshot of something, sometimes when I'm on my phone, I get better screenshots and sometimes on my computer, I get better ones. We're going to do it from both today. OK, so here is we're in design space. And before we start a new project, I do just want to remind you guys that you can go to my profile and you can just go up here and search for useless crafter. And I have a bunch of projects that are ready to go. So in case you want that, my last video showed you how to do this one and just quickly edit something if you don't like the way it is. But, you know, most of it's already prepared. So that's always an easy go to place to look first. But all right, let's go into a new project. What we're looking for is let me bring up. Hold on. OK, here we go. Let's go over here. So I took a screenshot on my phone, so that's going to be the first way that we're going to do it, because sometimes I find that a screenshot on my phone is better. So here is the image. I emailed it to myself. Right. And so you're going to download it and then we're going to go into design space, back into design space, and we're going to go to upload. We're going to upload image and find our file. So mine will be in downloads. And here it is. So I'm just going to double click on it. So it looks pretty good, right? OK, so I like this image. Let's go and continue. I know it's the Midland Rockhounds. Never heard of such a thing. The things that you learn. All right. So I if you notice that let me undo that. My cursor, I went into the white space and I just clicked on it. Everything that was white disappears because you have this little background where you probably would recognize that it's going to be a background. So we're going to apply and continue. And what you're going to want is we're going to want a flat graphic. This is for stickers. This is if you're going to try to make this into, for instance, I might do it in vinyl or in cardstock. But I prefer to use SVG files for that. I don't like this process for that. So anyway, that's a topic for another day. You want to go to flat graphic and continue. Everything looks good here. I want to change this. You want to change your image name. You want to be in the practice of always changing your image name, because if you ever want to go look for it, you don't want to have to remember IMG 2962. Right. So rockhounds. And you know what? Maybe I'll just add in just in case. So that way it might come. I'll come up and more more words to search for. All right. So I'm going to change the image name. You can add tags. I don't. And I'm going to click upload. So now we have. Oh, that's so funny. It like brought. Let's see what this looks like. Let's create an offset. Oh, there were things in here that I didn't get rid of. OK, so let me show you. Mistake number one is that this image shouldn't look like this rectangle. I forgot to get rid of this and there must be something over here. So let's upload again and this time be better about cleaning up the image. So I'm going to go back to downloads and it's a good lesson. OK, this is what happened. So this is the image that we want, right? I'm going to continue. And if you remember, I clicked on in the white space and it got rid of everything. But I forgot about this little image thing. So what you want to do is I like going to the erase feature and then this is your eraser size and you can see how big it is here. I think that's a pretty good size. So I'm just going to click on my left the cursor on my the left cursor on my mouse. Or the left button. OK, so I got rid of that. I think there was something up here. All right. And now we can apply and continue. We still want the flat graphic continue and upload. Oh, I forgot to change the name, but you know, we're supposed to do that. So that's how I knew something was wrong, right? Like this image, when I clicked on it, it showed a bigger rectangle. And look how different it is when I click on this one now. Now it's just around the image. So I kind of know. Right. The other thing that I really like about this, too, is, for instance, if you were to click an offset and you can see how it's going to cut all the way around. So I have the right image. This gives me further proof that it's just this sticker. All right. So we're going to cancel for now. Let's get rid of this one. This was the bad way to do it. OK, so now with stickers, what's awesome is that you can still add more things to it. So, for instance, I love that this is already, you know, a nice circle. We can go and add text, for instance, and we can do the curve. So we want it to we can move this text and move everything. So here's our image. We can move our text up here and you can see that we can curve it some more. So let's see. So this looks like our perfect circle. Right. So here's our text and you can change it to some other cutesy text. So let's go into my type BFC. That's like where all the cute fonts are. And let's just. I don't know, I'll just click on this first one, the Aloma Island. OK, I do think the text is too big. So let's make the font size smaller. And we could do something. So now let's go back to our curve and we want to make sure that our curve fits the text. OK, so it's right around there, which I want it bigger. So hold on. Trying to make this. Oops, I want it this way. OK. Well, let's see. That looks pretty good. I didn't want the text sitting on the orange at all. But let's just say you want to type in 2025 Spring Baseball. I don't know. Look how cute that is. Right. And if you really want it to be amazing, you can put in a name. I'm trying to think where I. You could, if you wanted to do your whole teams, like all the names of your baseball players, wanted to do individual ones, you can add it here. But anyway, this is one way to do it. So I kind of like adding that. Right. And what you want to do is you want to change this to a color that fits. Right. So when you go to here to assign the color, it's kind of hard to know what color you're using. Right. It's going to be hard to match. So what I would recommend is let's go out here and go to Canva. And let's just open up a new design and I think you can get I pay for Canva, but what we're doing should be free for you. So let's go to uploads and I'm going to upload a file. I'm going to upload that, this picture, the rock hounds. And the reason why I'm uploading it to Canva is within Canva. What's nice is it will tell me the colors that are being used. So I'm going to. So it was uploading. I'm going to click on it and it's dropped into my project. Right. And then what I can do is I can. Okay. When you click on your colors, I mean, these are my brand colors, but look at the photo colors. It tells you exactly what color it is. So this way we can take this info back into design space and have a really nice color for our thing. So let me write this down because I'm not going to remember it. And I'm going to write down both the blue and the orange. So the orange is B79333. And I know you're, you might be thinking to yourself, I have a feeling that my friend is into herself. Like that's an extra step that I don't really need, but it really completes the sticker. It makes it look super professional because you've got all the colors in there and then we're going to do an offset. It's going to look amazing. I didn't get the gray or the white. I don't think we'll be using those colors. All right. So here we go. I'm going to click on this 2025 spring baseball. I'm going to go to this color button and click on advanced. And here I can type in that color. So it's B79333. And there it is. I love it. Okay. So we've got that. Now what we want to do is because 2025 spring baseball, if I just went and grabbed this image right now and flattened it, what will happen is when you go to send it to cut, it will cut out the individual two, zero, two, five, each one of those letters for spring baseball. And we don't want that. So what you want to do instead is keep it unflattened. Okay. We're going to grab the whole thing and you're going to do an offset. So let's see how big of an offset we want. When I'm crafting paper crafting, I like my offsets to be really, really thin. So let's try that and see what it looks like. So it's going to be a 0.05. I'm going to apply it. And that's going to be a pretty, I think that's too thin because you're going to have little cutouts here, here, and it's going to, it's going to mess up your sticker. So let's undo that and let's do a bigger offset. And for stickers, I don't think it matters as much as a cardstock project, how thin your offset is. So let's go to 0.1 and see what that looks like. This is better. Okay. So the only thing I don't like is this little hole right here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to offset. I'm going to change this to basic for a second. Okay. And go to contour. This is just a little detail, but you don't want your machine cutting on that getting snagged on it and then ruining the whole sticker. So I'm going to select this to remove it. And so now it's a nice clean cut of a sticker. Your machine will be able to handle it. We want that offset to be, I want it to be white. I like the way that looks. And now what we're going to do is we're going to grab the whole thing. And you know what? I almost don't even like this line right here. I feel like it's too, too straight. So the good news is, okay, so let me undo this for a second. Let's just get rid of this offset. I don't like that offset. I'm going to make it even bigger. Okay. So the offset I'm going to go to 0.12. And let's see what, oh, so it got rid of that little dot anyway. This cut doesn't seem as severe. So I'm going to change this to white, grab the whole thing and we're going to flatten. All right. That's it. Okay. So now what you're going to do is you want to resize it to however big you want it. Now let's talk about stickers. Where are you putting the sticker? If you're just putting it on a binder, it's flat, straight. You can make it as big as you want. The only restriction you're going to have is how big your printer can print it. And two, you got to make sure that it falls within Cricut's guidelines. If you are going to put this sticker on a helmet, it's circular. Your maybe a two inch sticker is pretty good. I think that's, that's the size that I usually do for my daughter's helmet. Between one and a half and two, and you can play around with it. If you're only doing it for your one daughter or your one son, I would, um, I would just do multiples of this. So I would, for instance, I would make this two inches and then I would make a copy. So control C, control V, make this one two and a quarter, right? Just so you have a few sizes, you can mess with it. You can put it on different things. That's what I would do. All right. How was that? Easy peasy, right? Let's go to make it. And I'm going to kind of, um, let's see. You always want to save it. So this is what the lock counts, not the midway lock. Save it. And then, um, okay. So when you go to print then cut, let's say you had a bunch of different sizes. You can easily go here and do your duplicates. So let's say you want five copies of that. You want to apply it and they're all here. So cute, right? I think you can even do six, maybe seven. It's easier to remove them. Oh yeah. So this fits. Okay. So you got seven of these. Okay. So what you want to do is we're going to click on continue. I'm actually not going to print it, but I'm going to walk you through the steps of printing it. It's got to connect to the machine. I want to make sure it's on. Yes, it's on. And I'm not forgetting that I'm going to show you how to do a screenshot from your computer. So if you didn't find an image that you liked on your phone, but we're going to go through this first and then the second part will be easy peasy. Okay. So you want to send to your printer. So your Cricut, I get this question a lot. I just want to make it very clear. Your Cricut cannot print. So you design the sticker in design space and you're using that application to send it to your printer that will print it out. And then you're going to take it and put it on a mat and your Cricut will then cut your sticker for you. That's what you're doing. Okay. So we're going to send to printer and, um, okay. I'm like, don't do this to me. Where's my printer? Um, I'm going to go to my regular printer that I do, um, add bleed, add bleed. What it will do is that outline that you have, the white outline that we have, it's going to add a bleed. So it's going to be a little bit more white, which in this case doesn't matter. Right. But if it was a different color, like a blue, um, you want to add the bleed because if it cuts off just a little bit, it might get some white in it and you want the blue. So it just gives you a little bit more of a bleed. Okay. We want to add bleed. You want to use system dialogue. So click yes to that and go to print. And this part is important because I used to think that I had a, just a janky printer, but it was really my settings and also the sticker printer that I was using. Um, I do like to use needle labels. They are on my Amazon shop. Um, I think they make beautiful stickers. All right, let's go to our printer here. We're going to go to preferences and we want to make sure that everything is going to be amazing. So like our media type, we want that to be, I'm going to do it on a glossy sticker paper. So I'm going to select glossy, pick the one that matches what, what you're printing on. Um, I want to go to photo image that's got that glossy, it's like a really pretty sticker. And then down here, I just go to manual. I'm going to feed it into my printer one sheet at a time. And then you click okay. And then it will print. So I'm going to cancel out of this. Once it prints, then you're here. This is what it's going to look like. It says you already printed. If you want it to print again, because I don't know your print got messed up, or you want to do more, you just click on this again and send it to printer and do all of that again. Now, now that it's printed, you're going to select your material. So I'm going to type search for sticker. And these are all the different ones that you have. The one that I have for needle labels, it's the waterproof white one. So I'm click on done. Now it's important that on your mat, you put it at the 00 and you feed it in like you would to cut anything else, okay, and then it will cut all around. And that's all that it is. Alright, so I'm going to cancel out of here. Let's go and look up some images of the Okay. And let's look at images and see if we can get a good one. Let's Oh, I like kind of like this one. Okay. Let's see if I can get a bigger. That's a nice image of that. Okay. The reason why I like this one is if you remember when we first uploaded it to design space, I clicked on the white area and the whole thing disappeared. Well, this blue is so nice and crisp. It should be easy to also remove this blue background and just have the orange and everything inside of it. Okay, so let's go to I have my little snipping tool new and click on this one. Okay. And I will crop here just so that I have less to do in design space. Move this over, get it into the blue, where I know it's going to be easy for me to clean up in design space. Okay, click that check button. And now I'm going to save it. I'm just going to save it as whatever and put it into my downloads. Save. Okay, let's go back into design space. Okay, we're going to cancel out of here. Still have this. Let's go to upload. Upload image, browse, and we're going to pull in our little screenshot. Okay, click continue. And then here I am back at that page or back at that step, right? So I'm going to click in the blue area. And you see it all disappeared. Now what I do see, though, is like this little squiggly line, we have to get rid of that. What actually what I don't like is I'm going to see if I can make this any bigger. This image is not as clean as the one on my cell phone, because look at the little jagged blue right here. That's going to come through and I don't really like that. And I don't really want to go and click on each one of these blue lines. So this was just not a good image to do. Okay. And just to show you how that feature works, I'll click on the blue on the inside. And you can see how it got rid of all the things that I thought was blue, but it's, it's just not a crisp image anymore. So a lot of times, like I said, I find that my my phone gets me better images. So let's undo this for a second, we can go in with this, we want to go to the eraser button. And we could just, well, it's not, maybe we can crop it, maybe cropping it better. I still really don't like this image. It's got that line, let's just apply and continue. I'm going to bring it in so you can see what it looks like. Okay, we're going to upload it. And you see how it's just not see how that orange right there is. It's very full. It's like a nice band. This orange has a little blue here. It's just not as crisp and clean. And so when you go to print and make the sticker, it's not going to look as good. So I'm glad I found an image that I thought was going to be good. And it didn't work out so that you can see the differences. Alright, so I hope you make a ton of stickers. I just want to remind you guys, check out theuselesscrafter.com because I have an in-person workshop. I mean, it's a workshop, I guess, because we're going to be working. But it's going to be out of my space. So if you're in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, check that out and see if you like it. You basically, I'm going to show you how to use Design Space to make a project that you want to make. And then we're going to do that on Zoom one-on-one. And then you're going to come together with, when there's a bunch of people here, there's going to be five of you guys back. And then you're going to use all my supplies to actually cut and make your project. So I hope that sounds fun because it sounds fun to me. Alright, bye guys!