Personalised Kids Bday Party - Homemade Stickers!

Thanks for all the party love on the Happy Smurfday post. As promised I wanted to share some of the easy ways I personalised the party. Don't freak out, I'm by no means recommending some crazy arse approach to hosting your next kiddie bday bash, oh no. I'm more of a half-arse approach lady so never fear this will be easy peasy.

So, the stickers. These went into the "lolly" bags and as labels on the pencil packs.

There are two ways you can do these at home, with a Xyron Sticker Machine or label paper. I used my handy dandy little Xyron machine, which I bought years ago and have never really used for anything other than playing around. You can pick them up at Lincraft for $12.99 (complete with sticker paper cartridge).

You also need:


- Images for your stickers. You can download my sticker templates here.
- paper to print your stickers on, high gloss photo paper if using the sticker machine, or label paper.
- scissors - or a circle cutter - to cut your stickers out
- baking paper if you're not using a sticker machine

1. Layout and print your Stickers
Use whichever software you are comfortable with to layout the graphics you want to make into stickers. I'm a simpleton and use word. Gasp!

I used the same vintage embroidery pattern I used for the invites and coloured the image in using the "paint" program on my laptop. I then resized the image and imported it into word along with some free icons. I also added a sticker with the name of each kid.

Or, to save time, just download my template here.

If you're using the sticker machine, print onto the high gloss photo paper - I find this gives a more durable and shiney finished sticker that looks "more like a sticker", but feel free to use paper of your choice.

If you're going with the label paper, print your stickers on there.

2. Cutting
Cut the stickers out taking care to be neat. Check the width of your sticker to make sure it will feed through the machine without touching the edges of the channel you feed the stickers through.




3. Get some sticky on your sticker.
For the sticker machine, feed your sticker in the gap on the top of the machine. This puts the sticker between the backing paper and the sticky layer.



At this point you don't need to be too careful about lining things up as you can peel the stickers and reapply them evenly along the backing paper once you've finished each batch.

Gently pull the sticker through the bottom end while you continue to carefully push the sticker through the top.



Tear off your sticker and rub, rub, rub.


This makes sure the sticky sticks to the back of the sticker.

For label paper, carefully peel the backing paper off your sticker and arrange on a strip of baking paper.

Da dah, homemade stickers!


Now, don't wait for the next birthday party, go make stickers! (Look out for the Lolly bag and Biccie Boy stickers next post)