How-to: Make Re-Usable Stickers from Upcycled Paper

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My next step in greening my family’s art supplies is stickers!

I know that foam stickers are just terrible, but when they’re 65% off on the day after Thanksgiving and my little ones are looking at them with adoration in their eyes, sometimes I just can’t resist. Of course, even more conventional stickers aren’t great–you can’t recycle that waxed backing, and it’s just one more thing to buy.

Fortunately, I think that we’ve finally broken the sticker lust in our family this year, simply because homemade stickers that work just as well (and often better!) than store-bought stickers have proven to be so simple to make, and so fun, too. The girls can make stickers from family photographs, from their own art, or from pictures that they cut out of magazines or old books. When I scrapbook, I can make stickers out of lettering, or shapes punched from my vintage wallpaper collection, or, if I feel like it, from my latest Entertainment Weekly.

Read on, because you’re going to find this project really fun:

The trick to making your own stickers is finding a really good repositionable glue. This type of glue is often sold as an aerosol spray (yikes!), but my favorite is Aleene’s Tack it Over and Over Again, which comes in a bottle. Unfortunately, I did have to order it online and have it shipped to me, which I didn’t love, but one bottle lasts forever and I also use it to re-tacky my Cricut mats (shh, don’t tell Cricut!), so it earns its keep.

Cut out images for your stickers however you’d like. Repositionable glue works well with all types of papers, even my oh-so-brittle vintage wallpaper samples, and also thicker materials, such as plastic clamshells drawn on with Sharpies. In this particular project, I’ve cut a bunch of images out of an old and quite beat-up Golden Book encyclopedia.

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