How to Make Stickers with Cricut's New Offset Feature

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When Cricut recently announced that they were adding an offset feature to Design Space I know I wasn't the only one who immediately thought of making stickers. There are lots of projects that this feature will be an amazing addition to, but stickers was the first one I wanted to try. 

Stickers are huge right now, so I thought it would be fun to make some. I know my girls are obsessed with the vinyl stickers you can put on water bottles and stuff. One of them got a big pack for Christmas and another got some for her birthday, and they put them on everything. We even got a couple cheap packs on Amazon to use at a school store at my kids' school and they were a huge hit, students and teachers were buying them. 

I decided I wanted to make some kindness themed stickers, so I searched in Design Space for some designs I thought would work well. They have a ton of Be Kind designs so it was hard to narrow it down to just a few. You could use this same technique with pretty much any design you want, using images available in Designs Space or designs that you upload. 

Once I had chosen the images I was going to use I played around with changing the colors to get the look I wanted for each sticker, but then I remembered what I think seems to be a little used feature in Design Space, and that is patterns. So I played around with the patterns, adding different patterns to each of the designs until I was happy with them. 

Then I used the offset feature to create the white outline around each design. After that they were ready to print out and cut. 

I used printable vinyl to make my stickers, but there are also lots of different kinds of sticker paper you can use. There are papers with different finishes, glitter, metallic, clear, etc., even some that say they are waterproof. I had printable vinyl on hand and I like the way it works for things like laptop stickers. Basically, just know that there are lots of options depending on how you plan on using the stickers and what look you are going for.  

I think they turned out pretty cool and I definitely see more sticker making in my future. It was such an easy, quick project too. 

How to Make Be Kind Stickers with a Cricut

You will need:

• a Cricut Maker or Explore
• a printer
• Design Space on a computer (offset is not currently available on tablets or phones)
• printable vinyl or sticker paper

Instructions:

Choose the images that you want to use for your stickers. I searched for "Be Kind" in the search bar and chose a few that came up. I was looking specifically for designs that would look good all in one color or pattern so that I could fill the entire design. 

Once you have the images that you want to use on your canvas, change each design to a print then cut. To do this click the operation bar at the top that says basic cut and it will drop down a list of cutting options, at the bottom you will select Print then Cut, Standard. 

Next you will fill your design with the desired pattern. With your image selected click on the color selector box at the top, when that opens there is a print type drop down that says color, click that and select pattern. This will bring up a bunch of little pattern squares that you can select from. They are small so sometimes it is a little hard to see exactly what the design is but if you click on it and try it and don't like it you can always choose a new one. You can filter the designs by color if you know what color you are looking for. You can also upload your own patterns. I tried to choose mostly pattern that had a very subtle pattern, like a watercolor wash type of a pattern, or subtle dot. I also tried to stay away from patterns with a lot of white because you will start to lose your image into the background with too much white. You can see with one of my designs I used a light floral pattern and although  I do really like it, it is definitely the hardest to read. 

Once you click a pattern it fills in the image you have selected with that pattern. If you go back into the pattern selector there is an option at the bottom to edit pattern. If you click this you can adjust the size of the pattern, move it, rotate it, or flip it. Adjust the pattern until you have it just the way you want it. 

When you are happy with you pattern fill you are ready to move onto the next step, which is making the offset. To do this simply select you image and click offset. Slide the toggle to make the offset bigger or smaller. I tried to adjust mine on most of the stickers so that I didn't have any sections cut out in the middle, with the exception of the floral Be Kind that I left one in on purpose, and the Bee Kind that I missed that there was a cut out inside of the wings. Because of this mine are not all a standard width, I just slid the adjuster until all of those spaces in the middle were gone. I used rounded corners for all of my designs. 

The offset automatically turns black, change the color to white. This makes it hard to see on you canvas, but one easy trick to help you with that is to click down on the bottom of the layers panel where it says canvas, then click on the color box at the top of the screen. This allows you to change the background color, I changed mine to a light gray and then the white offsets are easy to see. 

When both the image and the offset are the way you like, select both and click flatten. 

Repeat this process for all of your images and then you are ready to cut them out. 

Follow the prompts to print the designs out on your printer, then cut them out with your Cricut. Be sure to select the proper material (printable vinyl, sticker paper, etc.) so that it cuts correctly. 

And now you can start sticking stickers on everything!