How to make sticky labels using Cricut

Buying most things for school children can become a very costly adventure.

My daughter Poppy started kindergarten this year and I nearly had a heart attack on the cost of....well everything!

One of the things that surprised me the most was the cost of labels for school books and belongings. It was over $40 for a pack of 50! So I figured "I could make them!!"

In today's blog post I will show you how to make your own labels for your children's school belongings or even for your own purposes.

I found a wonderful font called Morva from the Majestic Bundle from Fontbundles.net which was perfect!



You will need the following-
Majestic Bundle - Morva font
Cricut explore air electric die cutting machine
Cricut design space
Sticker paper
inkjet printer

1- Open up the Cricut design space. Click on the text icon and type your text. Change it to the font you would like to use. I am using MORVA from the Majestic Bundle.



2- Once you have your font selected, we need to add the glyphs on the words. To do this we need to open up Character Maps (font book on MAC), select the font you are using.

Once selected, go to the "group by" drop down box and select " Unicode Sub range" This will open up another window. In this new window, scroll to the end and select "private use characters". This will now bring up any glyphs for the particular font you selected.

Find the Glyph you would like and click on it. Press the select button, then the copy button. this will copy the glyph for you.



3- Click back on your design space. Double click onn your text to bring up the text box. Highlight the letter you want to change into a glyph and press Ctrl V to insert it to your text.



4- Repeat the above steps to change the C to a glyph as well.



5-  We now need to change the colour and type of file the text is. As you can see circled below we need to click on the text box in the layers column, then select the colour you would like. Next we click on the print option so we can change the text from a cut file to a print file, as we dont want to cut the text, just the label we will make around it.



6- Next click the ungroup icon so we can adjust the space between all the letters. Once they are ungrouped adjust the space with the arrow keys.



7- Highlight the word and move it to the other word to make the space appropriate.



8- Highlight all the text and then click on the group icon.



9-To make the label click on the shape icon and insert a square. Unlock the shape and make into a rectangle.



10-  Click on the square in the layer tab and then change the colour to lilac.



11- Highlight the text and then click on the align drop down box. Next select move to front.



12-  Move the text over the rectangle. Highlight both and click on group.



13- Duplicate the label as many times as you would like to print using the duplicate icon.



14- The next thing we need to do is to ensure that when we print and cut, the software will cut it where we want it too. Cricut design software automatically tries to print and cut the most economical way, but we don't want that with a print and cut. We want the labels to print as we see them on the design space.

To ensure this happens, we need to select everything we want to keep together and then right click and select "attach".

This will keep the labels from moving when we cut.



15- Click on the Cricut Go button. make sure your file looks the same as your design space then click on Go.



16- The software will now prompt you to print your file. Print on your sticker paper.



17- Once printed place your printed file onto your Cricut mat and feed into your machine.

Next set your blade depth. Basic sticker paper cuts well by selecting the custom option and then selecting washi tape.





18- Click the Cricut button on the machine, it will scan the registration marks and start to cut.





19- Once it finishes cutting, weed the stickers.



20- Your stickers are now finished ready to use.



You can now place your stickers onto your childs belongings.





This tutorial can be used for so many different things. You could make labels for your cupboards, and even if you use printable iron on fabric you could make clothing labels.

A few tips when using the print and cut function on the cricut design space.

* Ensure you print with inkjet not laser. the machine cannot register the marks with its light if you use laser.

* Make sure you highlight everything on your design space and select "Attach". This will ensure your images/text will stay where you want them to when you print.

* When performing print and cut try not to use google chrome as your browser. I had a lot of issues with it and found that firefox worked a lot better.

I hope you have enjoyed the tutorial and you create lots of amazing labels!!

Until next time..