Making Cricut Stickers – Digital Learning & Scholarship

Cricut is a free, easy to use software to use for creating 2D designs for a variety of purposes; at the STA desk, we offer vinyl stickers/labels, buttons/pins, paper/card cutouts, and more. Here are some of the projects we’ve done with the Cricut machine in the past!

Creating a project in Cricut is easy, and we’re here to help with every step. Here, we’ll outline a quick sticker project you can follow along with.

At our desk, we offer printed vinyl stickers that you can design yourself (more on that later). We recommend filling an entire sheet before printing. Our sheets are 8.5in x 11in (21.6cm x 27.9cm) with a transparent background.

First, open the Cricut Design Space app. It’s free to download and to create an account on all platforms. On Windows, visit the Cricut website. On iOS/macOS/Android, simply download from the App Store/Google Play Store.

After you log in, click the “New Project” button in the top right.

"New Project" button in the top right of Cricut Design Space

Here you’re free to create whatever designs for stickers you want. There are some fun ways you can do this;

Art Programs
Art programs like Adobe Illustrator and Procreate have arguably the most freedom for you to design what you want, especially if you already have experience in them. They might not be the best tools to use when starting out though, as there’s so many tools and options for customization.

PS: Alternatively, draw your design on paper! We’ll be able to help convert it into a sticker.
Images
Your stickers don’t necessarily have to be “art”; they can just be images too! It could be of scenery, friends, family, or just aesthetic items. Crop your image to your desired shape and upload to Cricut.
AI
Google’s Gemini AI can be helpful in generating ideas for visualizing your sticker, which you can then customize. Make sure to ask it to provide a transparent background.

Once you’re done creating your sticker design, upload to Cricut where we’ll do some final customizations to make sure your sticker turns out perfect. As an example, I’ll be converting a design I saw on a T-shirt into a sticker.

Upload the image into your project in Cricut by pressing “Upload” on the left hand side. Upload your image and click Continue.

We should remove the background using the magic wand tool. Click on the background and it will remove pixels of similar colors; you can adjust how effective this is by changing the “Tolerance” number at the bottom. A higher tolerance removes less similar colors, while a low tolerance removes only very similar colors. Make sure to erase any holes that you may want to be transparent.

Here, use the eraser tool to remove any stray pieces from the main design. You can adjust the size and zoom in to clear outlines better. You can turn on “Preview Single Layer” in the top right corner to make sure you didn’t leave any details.

Once you’re done, click the “Apply and Continue” button in the bottom right corner. Choose “Flat Graphic“, “Continue“, and “Upload“.

We have our graphic, and now we should make sure the size is correct. Select the image and drag the corners. You can see how big the image is in the dimensions.

Note: If the box around your design is too big, you may not have removed all of the stray pieces from the background, and you’ll need to reupload and remove the background again. Alternatively, you can crop the background using the Slice tool.

Now we need an outline for the Cricut to cut around. Select the newly trimmed image and click “Offset” in the toolbar at the top left.

Here, you can choose how thick you want the outline to be, and whether or not the corners are soft. This will depend on how big your sticker is, but generally from 0.15in to 0.25in (0.381cm to 0.635cm) is a good size.

If the offset is set to white (or white enough), the background will be transparent. If you want a colored background, click the color square at the top and choose a color.

Select both the offset shape and the image and click “Flatten” at the bottom.

You can repeat this process for all your designs. Press “Make” in the top right and see if your designs fit the page. Go back and resize if they don’t.

That’s it! Afterward, come to the STA desk with your design and we can help you print it immediately. Keep in mind this process is just one of many different ways to create a sticker. The STA desk is open to help you design the perfect sticker, even if you have no idea where to start, or encounter any issue. We can always help you explore different ways to design stickers, and don’t be afraid to experiment. Have fun!