Vinyl stickers
Have you ever wondered exactly how vinyl stickers are made? Then you’re in luck. In this post, I’ll explain how to make a vinyl sticker from start to finish. Vinyl stickers are what Vinyl Revolution is known for. It’s our bread and butter. We take pride in our stickers and give them tender loving care every step of the way. The process consists of several steps. Starting with design and ending in fully ready for application. Remember, vinyl stickers are different from vinyl decals! Check out our blog The Difference Between Vinyl Stickers and Vinyl Decals for more on that distinction.
Where do we start?
To get this process rolling, the sticker is designed as vector artwork on the computer. Every aspect of the sticker needs to be just right: design, size, colour settings, print layers and cut contour layers for die-cutting. Once the sticker design is ready to go, it’s time to get it loaded into the wide format printer. Vinyl Revolution printers aren’t your normal office or home printers. We have giant wide-format printers that print on long rolls of vinyl. They print in high resolution with amazing colour-depth.
Printing the vinyl sticker
If you set everything up right! Printing can take anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours. It depends on the size of the stickers but more importantly, it depends on how complicated the die-cut is. Die-cut stickers are vinyl stickers that have a custom shape cut out of them, including backing paper. They make stickers look better and are the sticker option of choice in our studio.
The weeding stage
Weeding the vinyl stickers is the next stage of the process. Usually weeding vinyl means you remove all the excess negative space from vinyl decals before taping them. In the case of die-cut vinyl stickers, we simply pop the sticker out of the roll one at a time. Then we get rid of all the excess vinyl. This can be a pretty time-consuming process. That’s why we’ve got big production tables to keep us comfy while we work!
Kiss cut stickers
Sometimes we kiss-cut stickers rather than die-cut stickers. This means that we only cut through the sticker layer and not the backing paper. When this happens, we either cut the stickers into big rolls or cut them into separate squares. This keeps things tidy and easy to pack.
the finished sticker
Then the sticker is ready to pack and ship straight to you! We use board-backed envelopes for all of our individual sticker shipments. They keep them well protected during transit and help avoid any creases in the vinyl. What happens when we ship a lot of stickers? We pack them right up into a bigger box and add some protective plastic to keep things in order during their journey around the globe.
Sticker Portfolios
Interested to find out how our vinyl decals are made? Check out our blog How To Make A Vinyl Decal From Start To Finish which explains the process in great detail.
Want to see how some of our customers used custom stickers to promote their brand? Check out these portfolio entries below for inspiration.
