Sticker Making

12/12/2012

Sticker Making

Sticker making is an exciting and easy arts and crafts activity that can provide hours worth of fun. Gone are the days of mere scratch-and-sniff, or gold stars your teacher gave you for good behavior in the first grade. Today's stickers are as diverse as our growing global population, coming in all shapes/sizes/colors. Stickers can be text, logo, graphics, drawings, pictures, or just about anything you desire them to be. Indeed, there is a high premium nowadays on creative, original stickers. Several mainstream art magazines host sticker design contests, as do cities (Annual Chicago City Sticker Contest), national companies (iLTHY, a creative apparel brand that sponsors an annual sticker contest), and trendy, niche brands like FSS (Finger Skate Selective, which hosts a prestigious but underground annual FSS sticker contest).

A recent story about sticker making in a French newspaper tells of an art teacher who wanted to raise his students' interest in great French art. So he copied several impressionist masterpieces onto sticker paper and stuck them to his students' locker doors! The students were instantly hooked. Next, the teacher taught his students how to recreate the stickers on their own, casually lecturing on each art work as he went along.

Sticker making is now easier than ever. There are a variety of ways to make stickers, and most techniques involve hardware and materials that are typically around one's house. The purchase of sticker paper may be required, but it's usually available at any superstore or office supply chain, and costs pennies per sheet.Psychedelic monogram stickers with which to adorn notebooks, photo collections, and personal library books are a great idea. Use any word processing or drawing program with which to type your initials. Play around with fonts, sizes, background shades, and colors. Print onto sticker paper and trim the letters accordingly. Or copy funky fonts from the internet and tweak their colors with a digital shop. The possibilities are endless!

Sticker making can be extended to encompass many other purposes, including décor. Give any wall a metal look with faux metal stickers. Turn fan photos and candid shots of favorite celebrities into oversize scrapbook wall stickers. Print floral designs onto see three stickers and inexpensively turn kitchen windows into bucolic stained glass scenes. Take advantage of any design accent trend (polka dots, paisley) and turn these into stickers to enhance the fun feeling of a child's playroom.