By When I package up my decals, I always try to make the boring envelopes a little cuter by adding washi tape and and sticker. But it’s difficult to order custom stickers and stay within my budget if I don’t want to order thousands. Finally, I’ve found a cheap hack to making my own shipping stickers at home and I’m going to share it with you.
First of all, you’ll need a thermal printer. I already have the Dymo 4XL which I use to print my 4″ x 6″ shipping labels. Next, you’ll want to purchase some labels in the size you want your sticker to be. I chose 1″ squares. You’ll only be able to make black and white stickers so keep that in mind as your chose your design. I used my hand lettered “happy mail” design. You can find it in the SVG shop if you’d like to use it too!
Once you’ve loaded your printer with your roll of labels, you’ll want to get your design sized properly. I used Silhouette Studio, but you could easily use any design program. Make a canvas the size of your sticker. For my labels, I made a canvas that was 1″ x 1″. Then add your design and shrink it down just a little so that it fits nicely inside of your space. Once you are happy with your layout, you can save your file as a PNG to your computer so you will have it when you need more. If you’re in Silhouette Studio, just got to File > Save As > Save to Hard Drive > PNG.
Then all you need to do is open your PNG and print! Be sure to print to your label printer and select your label size from the menu first. I did a few test prints to make sure I liked the sizing and then printed 50 at a time. I did not use Dymo brand labels and I noticed that the spacing wasn’t perfect every time, however, this was not really an issue for my purpose. If you need your borders to be perfect, I would recommend using the matching brand of labels for your printer for best results.
To store these, I just taped one end to an empty washi tube and rolled it up. I added it to my washi tape holder on my desk and it’s ready to go whenever I’m packing up orders. In the end, I spent about $13 on labels and made thousands of stickers. Give it a try and let me know what you create!
Items used:
Printer: DYMO LabelWriter 4XL Thermal Label Printer here
Square Labels here
Happy Mail Design Hand lettered by Rebecca Lane Graphics here
Washi Tape holder here