I’ve been taking my cues from my kids. What keeps their attention? What do they want to make? How can they stay connected to their friends?
What happened last week at our house was completely unprompted by me. They decided to make stickers for their water bottles, computer cases, notebooks and to tuck into envelopes for their friends. They’ve been writing letters like crazy- I’ve even chased down the postman to make sure a few forgotten letters made it out one day. We’ve run out of stamps and now are waiting for our order of special Earth Day stamps to arrive. So, while we wait, the table is covered with homemade stickers.
My kids find creative prompts from popular culture memes, inspiring quotes and music. Funny sayings gleaned from the internet include “Hello, I’m Hungry”, “Tea Rex”, Billie Eilish logos, and sunflowers. Some designs are just small drawings from their imagination, hopes for the future or little doodles. I think our next step might be to transfer these designs from stickers to fabric for iron-ons or patches.
Materials:
Copy Paper
Scissors
A variety of pens, pencils, fine line Sharpies, colored pencils, markers
Packing tape
Parchment Paper or Wax Paper- according to the experts in the house, the parchment paper makes it easier for the sticker to release, but if you don’t have parchment paper, wax paper works well too (it’ll just take a bit of patience to remove before you put your sticker on a surface)
Procedure:
Create a design, outline and color it.
Cut around the outline, leaving a little white paper around the design.
Lay a piece of parchment or wax paper at your workstation. Put some packing tape, sticky side down, on top of the parchment paper, a little larger than the design you just created. Smooth out all the air bubbles. You can used ruler or plastic gift card to help make smooth out the bumps.
Lay your design on top of the shiny packing tape and then place more strips of sticky packing tape on top to seal the design. (Use the plastic card or ruler again as described above to get rid of any air bubbles)
Then, take scissors and cut out the taped design. This is important…make sure to leave at least 1/4″ of space around the sticker or else the tape will come undone. See the example photo below…you see the parchment paper around the design. The parchment paper won’t show up once you remove it.
Remove the parchment paper backing and stick your handmade stickers where you want them.
