Make Your Own Tiny Word/Phrase Stickers

A while back I saw that some ladies in a group were making tiny word stickers. I thought it was a very good idea! Sometimes you want to have a unique phrase or need a set of words you can never find and it would be great to be able to personalize phrases, or better yet, make phrases in your own language! Lets face it, the scrapbook industry is very English oriented.

I saw one tutorial on how to make these words, and let me tell you, it was so tedious and overwhelming I thought in the time I do all of that I will want to toss my computer out the window. Sure it would be great to have it all marginally exact and looking as professional as possible but honestly ain't nobody got time for that. So, in the hopes of making it less tedious and a speedier process I headed to the store, got sticker sheets and sat here on my own and made them in less time.

So, the supplies:

1. Sticker sheets - They come in all sizes. I went with 8.5 x 11 inches. The whole pack which was something like $12. It came with 25 sheets so that will last me a life time. I can't even think of that many phrases.

2. A printer - If you don't have a printer, and there is no one who you can bug to use one, you can go to an office supply store and have them printed there. Some are limited in colors so you might want to check that first.

3. A craft knife - It can be an X-acto or any other straight-edged craft knife you have.

4. A good ruler - I use a T-Square ruler which is something I would suggest for any scrapbooker to have in their arsenal. There are many different types of these rulers, but it really helps to keep a straight line aligned with the edge of a page.

5. Patience and a good list of words and phrases. The most tedious part is thinking of phrases or words you want. If you print at home you don't have to worry about coming up with a full sheet of words. Save your paper and then print more later.

I started off with my paper and got to work.

 

This is label sheet paper. It is white and very easy to get a hold of. As I said above, it comes in loads of different sizes so if you have a smaller printer you can still do this. You don't need a full size printer to make these words.  

The next step is to use whatever word editor you have on your computer. I don't have Microsoft Word. I don't have a need for it so I just used the Word Pad. You can do this in Photoshop or whatever program works for you. Since I am not using any particular style setting this is pretty much versatile to whatever you have.

As I said above, one of the tutorials I saw was using a different format adding grids and all kinds of things that just made the process more tedious than it should be. I set out to just get some words and phrases and then used my space bar to separate the words/phrases. Do what makes you comfortable. I hit my space bar five times between each word. It gave me enough space to have a nice balanced separation between words.

The fun thing about this is that you not only get to choose your own words and phrases but can also use your favorite fonts and change the color. For my words I used the Agency font and set it at 10 points. You can make your words/phrases smaller or bigger when choosing the font size. It all depends on what you want.

Also, by using the highlight option I could change the background color and then change the font color to whatever I wanted. I had to tweak the set up because the highlight only works with the font height so I hit the space bar over an entire line so it was all black before I started to type my words. Remember to hit the space bar a few times before you type a word. You want to keep enough color around the word entirely so when you cut it it doesn't look off.

These are my margin settings. The way highlighting worked was a trial and error. I highly suggest you print a test page on plain paper before you print on the sticker paper. I can not stress that enough.

After I got it printed correctly (again I stress test printing), I used my craft knife and ruler to start cutting the words. I had to leave the X-acto to the side as the nub of that thing was not getting along with my rulers edge. So use whatever you have on hand.

The next step is to align my ruler to cut but not all of the way through the paper. I cut below and above my words in a spacing I was pleased with. This doesn't have to be exact, it just has to work for you. I didn't use much pressure at all on my knife. Try some test cuts to know the right pressure. You can always go back over the cut. You DO NOT WANT TO CUT ALL THE WAY THROUGH. You still want the sheet intact so less is more in this case.

The next step is to cut in between the words/phrases, but again, not a lot of pressure. You see how the base of the sticky sheet is intact? I don't want to totally separate my words from the sheet. If you make the cuts too deep sometimes it won't matter since you don't have to cut all the way across. So take your time. Stream something on Netflix and enjoy the process.

When you are all done, you have your very own custom words/phrase sheet you can use on your scrapbook pages or even for your planner. The options here are all up to you. It isn't difficult and as you see it doesn't have to be the most tedious thing ever for us impatient folk!

So give it a try on your next challenge layouts and tag me in the Facebook group when you do so I can see it.