How I Make Digital Stickers With Procreate

Creating a digital sticker is a fun part! Once you start to figure out how Procreate works with a digital planner, you won’t stop creating them. I would like to walk you through, step-by-step, how to make your creative digital stickers.

Have you been trying to figure out how to make your digital stickers for your digital planner? If you say “Yes,” you are in the right place.

When I was making my sticker for the first time, I didn’t know how the procreate app works well. I have watched so many YouTube tutorials and Skillshare tutorials to learn about it. There are many ways to make digital stickers, but I found this way suitable for me. You can choose the method that is suitable for you.

Let’s dive in.

Gathering ideas and themes for digital stickers.

Brainstorm and idea scratch

There are two ways to make an idea scratch

1. Open the Procreate app and you can draw hand-lettering or an object you want to make. If you are good at drawing, you can directly draw onto the canvas on Procreate.

2. Gather the art you want to use. You can get your idea of an image, object, or icon from a free graphic design resource. I usually get inspired by Pinterest, Canva, and Pixels. Open the Procreate app, import the image as a reference, and add another layer to trace it.

It doesn’t matter which way you use it, as long as your creativity adds to it.

You can get inspiration from many graphic design resource sites, please find out more information in my post “GRAPHIC DESIGN RESOURCE SHOULD HAVE”

If you want to create a sheet of stickers, the first thing you’ll want to do is export each of the images you created with transparent backgrounds.

Here’s how:

1. Open the first sticker image.

2. Click the Layers icon (the two overlapping squares at the top-right).

3. The checkbox is next to the background layer to remove it.

4. Tap the wrench to open the Actions menu.

5. Tap Share.

6. Select PNG and select a destination to save to.

7. Repeat for all the other images you want to add to your sticker sheet. Choose the same export location as the first image to make it easy to import the images into Procreate.

Set the canvas.

Open the New Canvas menu in Procreate. To do this, just open Procreate and tap the + at the top-right. A list of new canvas sizes will be expanded.

The size and settings for your canvas depend on how you plan to create your stickers:

1. If you want to print high-quality stickers, use CMYK as the color profile, and 300 DPI as the resolution.

2. If your stickers are going to be digital, choose RGB as the color profile. You can still use 300 DPI as the resolution, but you can also go lower (to about 150) if you are worried about file size.

3. As for the dimensions, you’ll usually want to choose the size of the sheet. If you’re printing to a full-size sheet of the sticker sheet, make your canvas 2550 x 3300 (8.5 x 11″).

Bonus tips: If you make a digital sticker with an individual PNG file, you will need to customize the canvas size at least to 5 “x 5” and 300 DIP. I use this way to get individual stickers to make pre-cropped stickers for GoodNote.

Fruit stickers using Procreate—my favorite summer fruits

Drawing your own stickers

Now you set up your canvas on Procreate. Let’s create it.

1. Draw your sticker art.

If you want to draw your images right onto the sheet, now’s the time! Just choose your favorite drawing tool in Procreate and start sketching.

2. Duplicate layer

Go to the Layers Panel at the top right of your toolbar. Swipe your sticker layer to the left and duplicate another layer.

Or Tap the ‘+’ to add a new layer. This layer is for drawing sticker outlines if you are confident to draw outlines of the same size. And then, move this layer underneath your artwork. Draw a thin white outline around your artwork to give it that sticker look. Then fill in the white.

3. Fill layer

I use this method to make outlines evenly. There are many ways to make die-cut outlines, and I have tried this method to save time and effort.

Here is how.

1. “alpha lock” on the bottom layer.

2. Choose a pure white color from the color plate

3. Fill the layer—you can drag the color to the object or click layer and tab “Fill layer.”

4. After filling the layer with white, turn off the “alpha lock”.

5. Click the magic wand on the left top panel, and use “Gaussian Blur” at around 10-13%—it depends on the size of your canvas, but don’t go over 15%.

6. Click “s” on the left top panel, and click “automatic”. touch and drag white-filled objects to clear edges.

7. Check all the edges and fill in any empty spots with white. You can use any brush, but I use a monoline brush or hard airbrush.

8. If you want to make a shadow, duplicate the white-filled layer again. And go over the steps from 4 to 6 again. This time the blur should be 3–5% and the color will be black or dark grey.

9. Click “N” on the layer panel, adjust opacity to around 50%, and layer function as “Multiply.”

Also, you can skip the white layer if you don’t want a sticker look and just shadow is needed. When I make a realistic-looking sticker, I only use shadow.

Here is an example of a short video you can follow.

How to make digital stickers in Procreate

4. Make the background transparent.

Next, go back to the Layers Panel and find the “Background layer”. Uncheck the small box to the right. This turns off the background color and makes your canvas transparent.

5. Crop final your stickers.

We need to crop your final work so there is no extra space around what you drew. Go to the top right of your toolbar and tap the icon that looks like a wrench. This pulls up the Actions Panel. Then tap on Canvas>Crop & Resize.

6. Export stickers as PNG files.

All you have to do is go back to that wrench icon to Actions then tap Share>PNG.

If you have a digital sticker, it can export a PNG file. However, if you have a few stickers you have made, it would be better to export shared PNG files, so you can get individual stickers.

7. Save to file in your storage or iCloud/dropbox

You can save either one works well. The sticker file size is huge, I use the iCloud drive for my art file. It is better to save one storage. It is up to you.

Bonus Tip! When you create a digital sticker, always keep your original element with a transparent background for later use. I normally use these original files to create seamless patterns. Here is “how to create a seamless pattern in Procreate”

8. Import into your digital planner app

There are many note-taking apps. Whichever you use, you can use the PNG files to import them into your digital planner. If you want to make a pre-cropped digital sticker sheet, here is how I do it:

1. Open the sticker book template or sticker sheet template in the GoodNote app.

2. Split view with my PNG files of digital stickers.

3. Drag each PNG file into a digital sticker template.

4. Resize and arrange the stickers on one sheet.

Making your own digital stickers

There are many ways to make stickers for your digital planner. Whether you want to make digital stickers for planning apps like GoodNotes or artistically printed sticker sheets, Procreate is the gold standard for sticker creation on your iPad. I have shown that my method worked for me.

If you have another way to create digital stickers, I love to hear about it. How do you make your digital stickers?

For more about spring theme digital stickers and clip art ideas, please read the post.

you will get ideas and inspiration to create your own digital stickers for sale.

For more about digital sticker trends, 10 popular ideas for digital stickers, the right size, and file format, please read the updated version of the guide post.

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