I happened upon a cool video on youtube, which I sadly can’t remember the author of, but I will definitely add it here if I find her name. In the video she showed how you can make mini collages using painted white sticker labels. In the video she painted a bunch of large name tag type labels in a specific colour palette, and then cut the labels up and made tiny collages. It was a really cool idea! While I was watching, I got the idea to do what I am sharing here. I thought it would be fun to have hand painted stickers that you could use in your art journal.

I had a few packs of Multi-Use Labels from Dollarama ($1.25 for 75) and decided to give it a try. I did find that when I put some acrylic paint on the labels they rippled a bit and weren’t always completely stuck down to the label back. I haven’t tried them in my journal yet so I’m not sure if it will effect how well they stick, but there’s always mod podge to throw on top. For the first few that I made, I decided to messily swatch on some craft paint, for a painterly effect. The craft paint is on the runnier side, so maybe they would ripple less with a heavier paint, I’m not sure. Then I stamped some natural elements on top, such as flowers and leaves.

Some other stickers I made by splattering on spray ink and then stamping a flower on top. (To prevent overspray to the adjoining stickers, I just held a piece of scrap paper over top. But you could cut them apart as well.) This has a really beautiful and unique look. The possibilities really are endless. But I love the idea of making your own artist stickers. And so far they have been pretty simple to do. You can even use watercolour paint to fill in the flower afterward, or oil pastel, pencil crayon, alcohol markers, etc.

Another fun thing I’ve been trying again lately is carving my own stamps with linocut. So you can choose any design you like, carve it into rubber, and then have your own personalized, one of a kind stamp to stamp on your new stickers.

You can get all different sizes and shapes of labels, so you can make some with tiny stamps, all the way up to fairly large stamps. Sounds like it’s time to get crafting….