EASY DIY PLANNER STICKERS

Learn how to make easy, DIY Planner Stickers using your Silhouette with this step-by-step Silhouette tutorial.

No naked planners! Am I right?

I have no doubt that you, like myself absolutely love your day planner. And there’s certainly no shortage of planner accessories for us to trick out our “control centers” and personalize them to best suit our needs.

It didn’t take me long to jump on the accessory bandwagon. And man, oh man, when you have a Silhouette Cutting Machine, the possibilities become absolutely endless! I could get lost in my studio for days on end with that fun!

But I’m all about accomplishing my goals, and sitting in my studio, designing stickers for days on end is not going to get me any closer to living on that beautiful white, sandy beach somewhere. (Or is that just my dream?)

So today I’m sharing one of my favorite features (Print and Cut) for this Easy DIY Planner Sticker tutorial.

For your convenience, this post contains affiliate links. For more information, see our privacy page.

Today we’ll be using the Flat Colours Planner Set from The Hungry JPEG.  I just love this oh-so-cute sticker set because it addresses most of my planner needs and comes in ten different color schemes. Plus I couldn’t wait to get them into my favorite planner!

I love the Hungry JPEG not only because of their designs but also because their sets come with a complete license.

I know you’re excited to start accessorizing, so let’s get started!

Here’s what you’ll need

1. Flat Colours Planner Set from The Hungry JPEG – I chose the “sweet” color palette for this tutorial. (Or you can use any planner design of your choice.) Oh, and don’t forget to activate your E-bates Ticket so you earn free money on your purchase!
2. Sticker Paper – there are many different types of sticker paper available, however, I prefer the removable matte sticker paper. I absolutely love being able to easily move my stickers around if something changes. (And let’s face it when you have a chronic illness, your day will often look a lot different than you had planned.)
3. Printer– I have an HP all-in-one, wireless printer and absolutely love it. (Plus I can make copies and scan which is a huge bonus for me.)
4. Silhouette Cutting Machine
5. Cutting Mat

Page Set-up

Once you’ve downloaded the Planner Set, open up the Silhouette Studio Software.

Note: I have the Business Edition of Silhouette Studio, so in the images below, you may find that I have features you don’t. Although you do not need it for this tutorial, I highly recommend it to everyone, whether you are running a business or not! It’s a one-time upgrade fee and, if you use your Silhouette a lot, it’s worth every penny.

• Open the “page setup” window in the top right corner of your toolbar. Change your paper size to 8.5 x 11. (I also like to have the “show print border” and “show cut border” checked when I am working.)

• In the same window, open the registration marks window and choose the correct machine in the drop-down menu. This will add registration marks to your page so that your machine can read them and cut along the stickers.

Note: To get a little more room on your page, in the advanced section of the registration window, move your left, top, and right offset all the way to the left. Do not, however, move the bottom offset. Doing so will cause a Silhouette registration error. 

Import the Stickers

Now that your page is set up and ready to go, it’s time to import your design. I chose to import the PDF design over the JPG, simply because, in this particular design, the colors were brighter.

• To import your planner stickers into Silhouette Design Studio, click “file” in the upper left corner of your screen.
• Select “merge” and then choose the file you just downloaded.

Important Tip: If you hit “file,” and then “open,” the element will open on a whole new mat and since you’ve already prepared your page, you want to merge it onto that same page.

Prepare your stickers to cut

You can’t see it now, but your stickers are imported on a background, so before you can cut the stickers, you’ll need to remove it.

• Open the “trace” window on the right toolbar.

• Click on “select trace area” and select the image. At this point, you will see that not all of the stickers are highlighted, but you’ll fix this in the step below.
• Increase the “threshold” until all the stickers have been highlighted. (For me, it was at 80.0)
• Click “trace and detach.” The stickers are now detached from the transparent background.

• Click somewhere just outside of one of the stickers so that you select the background and hit delete. I separated them in the image below so that you can see what it looks like. (You’ll know you’ve selected the background when you see a large box around all of the stickers, instead of a small box around each of the stickers.)

Your stickers are now detached from the background they were imported in on.

Resize your stickers

As you can see, your stickers are larger than your page. This can be handled in one of two ways.

1. Grab all of your stickers and simply drag one of the corner toggles towards the center. It’s important to grab them all at once rather than trying to shrink them individually. That would take entirely too long and very difficult to make them all the same size. (This, by the way, is what I chose to do. My planner has small lines, and therefore, requires smaller stickers.)
2. If you want to retain the size of the stickers, the other option would be to simply cut some of the stickers and paste them onto another mat. That way you won’t lose any of the designs and can retain their current size. In the example below, I simply removed the long stickers so that everything else could fit on the same page.

Print your stickers

Let’s print those beauties!

• Select the printer icon on the top left toolbar and adjust your printer settings accordingly. (I usually choose “best” when I’m working with projects like this.)

• Load your sticker paper into your printer, making sure you have it loaded correctly. For mine (and I think most printers), the bottom up the paper is loaded facing up.
• Hit print 

Aren’t they pretty? I must admit, I get ridiculously giddy every time I print stickers!

Cut your stickers

It’s time to cut those adorable stickers so you can start planning and conquer those goals!

• Open the “Send” window on the upper right toolbar.

• Choose “sticker paper, white” in the “material” dropdown menu. (Or whatever sticker paper you will be using.)

Let’s take a quick moment to talk about what we are going to do here. Since you’re using sticker paper, you will be doing what’s called a “kiss cut.” You want the blade to cut through the top sticker layer, but not through the back of the paper. I highly recommend that you perform a test cut to see how deep you need to place your blade. For the sticker paper that I use, my machine cuts best with a blade depth of “1,” speed of “4,” and “1” pass.

• Now that you have everything set up, simply group the stickers and click “cut edge.” This ensures that you aren’t cutting the design within the sticker, but only the edge of it. As you can see from the image below, if you simply choose “cut,” the words within the stickers will also be cut.

• Place your sticker paper on your cutting mat so that the registration box lines up with the top left corner of the mat.

• Select “send to Silhouette” and watch the magic happen! Your machine will read the registration marks and cut around the individual stickers.

Note: If, at this point, you get that dreaded, “registration failed” error, I have the solution that works every time.

Wrapping Up

And that, my friend, is all there is to it!

I know it’s a little intimidating when you first get started, but it really is easy. Once you work through it a couple of times, you’ll be accessorizing your planner like a pro!

Be sure to sign up for our FREE Monthly Day Planner Cut Files. Simply subscribe to our newsletter below and have them delivered directly to your inbox every month. (You’ll also get instant access to all of the FREE resources in our community library, including our SVG cut files!)

To really go in-depth with your planner stickers and any other print and cut project, I highly recommend The Ultimate Silhouette Print and Cut Guide by Melissa Viscount.

This book cut my learning curve in half and I refer back to it often. As a Footprints of Inspiration reader, you get 10% off by using coupon code: FOOTPRINTS at checkout.

Thanks so much for stopping by the blog today. While you’re here, be sure to take a look around and don’t forget to say hello before you leave!

Until next time, my friend…

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