Revealing Our Kit Creation Process
Whether you want to start your own sticker shop business someday or are just curious about the kit creation process, in episode 5 of our podcast we go over the steps that we use to create our own sticker kits!
How To Create Your Own Sticker Kit
1. Source your art.
- The first step is to source your clipart. If you’re an artist, creating your own art is the way to go! If not, you can source art from Etsy or Creative Market. We mainly look for seasonal and holiday art, as well as what is currently trending in the planner community (like florals).
2. Design the actual kit.
- We have a template that we use for each kit format that we insert the designs into that we’ve created from the purchased artwork.
- You can use Silhouette, Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop to make your designs.
- Create a file with all of the art.
- Pick your color palettes.
- Add in your foil elements, art, and colors.
3. Print the stickers.
- Have a plan for how you will print your stickers! Some things to consider:
- Invest in a good printer!
- Experiment with your printer settings to print optimal colors that match closest to your design.
- We also recommend doing test prints.
4. Cut the stickers.
- We use Silhouette Portrait cutting machines.
- Streamline your cutting process by loading and cutting at the same time. The ideal set up is to have someone on the machines and the other on the computer.
5. Add foil to the stickers.
- Note: We have a whole e-Course devoted to this topic if you’d like to learn more about how to flawlessly foil your stickers.
- You can also check out our YouTube tutorial and download our foiling freebie guide for all the steps, but here are some things to consider:
- Investing in a thermal laminator
- Cutting your foil to size and what tools you’ll need
- What type of carrier will you use
6. Quality control.
- Quality Control is a crucial step of the process, especially if you are a sticker shop selling stickers.
- Consider doing QC at multiple steps to prevent a headache later on:
- When designing make sure that the colors have been updated and match the kit.
- Make sure boxes and cut lines are aligned correctly.
- Make sure there are no issues with the paper or colors during printing.
- Inspect stickers after they’ve been cut to make sure the sticker peels off from the sheet.
- Check for any black spots after foiling.
- And in the case that you do have any oopsies – save those for an oops sale!
7. Assemble your kit.
- Assemble your sticker sheets in page order and that’s it!
Be sure to listen to the full podcast episode for all the details!
Questions from the Audience
Do you design everything yourselves? How do you manage that and everything else?
Yes, we design everything ourselves! We don’t draw the art, but we design our kits from purchased artwork. Designing our kit is a two-person process with advanced planning/batching and doing specific tasks on certain days helps us to stay on track.
Is it hard to find clipart that other shops have not used yet?
Yes! The key isn’t to find art that other shops haven’t used because that’s really difficult. The key is to design in a way that’s unique. Adding foil, combining clip art from different artists, using a different color palette, and using a different kit format helps make your kit stand apart from other shops that use the same art. Everyone designs a little differently.
How do you decide what kind of artwork to do for each new release?
Ultimately it’s art that we love because we only design things we would personally want to use. We also base it on the season and things coming up like a special event/holidays.
How many kits do you normally print for new releases to have on day 1?
Around 40 full kits, 25 essential kits, but we’ve noticed we have to restock this amount multiple times. So we'll probably be increasing the amount in the future so that we don’t have to keep going back to make more. We’d rather produce too much than too little, because you can always discount it if it doesn’t sell. Be sure to base your numbers from your own stats/analytics and past sales.
That's it! We hope you’ve found this article helpful and educational as we share our entire process of creating a sticker kit from start to finish.
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Thank you SO much for being here. See you in the next episode!
xo, Lisa & Lucy
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