How to Make Digital Stickers in Procreate

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Keep reading to learn how to make digital stickers in Procreate!

Would rather watch a video? Watch my complete walk-through below.

Today I will be answering one of the biggest questions I get: “how to make digital stickers in Procreate!” I’m excited for this tutorial because I love showing you new techniques and methods to up your digital planning interest. And if you’re anything like me, digital stickers make digital planning much more fun!

The best thing is that you can create them to your personal liking and create EXACTLY what you have in mind and exactly what you need. I will take you through the step-by-step process so I know that you’ve got this covered and can feel comfortable to start creating some stickers all on your own. So, let’s get started making some digital stickers, shall we?

Materials Needed to Make Digital Stickers

Let me start off by talking about the materials I will be using to create the digital stickers.

1. iPad – Of course, I will be using my trusty iPad. I currently use my pink iPad Air and this iPad has been my go-to ever since I bought it. I do plan on eventually grabbing the iPad Pro, but for now I am sticking to this one as it works amazingly well, and if you know me, you know I LOVE pink.
2. Apple Pencil – Using my 2nd generation Apple pencil is also a MUST when creating digital stickers on Procreate. I can’t imagine creating stickers without it.
3. Pencil Case – I never like to have my pencil “naked” and always have a cover on it. I either use my silicone case or my chunky “clicky” pen.
4. Procreate app – Of course, this tutorial is all about how to make digital stickers in Procreate so you will need the app of course. It is sold exclusively on the app store and currently costs $12.99.

Get Started Making Digital Stickers in Procreate

The first thing I’m going to do is open up Procreate. I like to keep the canvas big so I always go for the “Screen Size” option. This is so that I can maintain the quality of the sticker design once I size it down. Otherwise, if I enlarge it later on, it will look pixelated and we don’t want that!

If you have an idea on what stickers you’d like to create, great! If not, you can always get some inspiration from different places. My favorite is Pinterest. Of course, keep in mind that this is for inspiration only, as creative block is a real thing.

I usually like to have an idea in mind as well as a color scheme I’d like to go with. Otherwise, I’ll probably be staring at my screen for a while. You can choose your colors based on the planner or journal you will be using your stickers on, or based on a theme you are going for such as a season or holiday.

A fun tip if you’re not sure how to match the colors you are trying to go for is to simply take a screenshot of the planner, journal, or look you are going for, tap on the colors tab in Procreate, tap the plus sign, and tap ‘New from photos’. Procreate will then create a color palette based on the image you used. You can change the name of that palette so you can remember what project you are using it for as well.

I also recommend that you turn on the Drawing Guide grid. You can do this by selecting the wrench icon and toggling it on under ‘Canvas’. This helps a lot so that you can draw straighter lines.

You will notice that you have lots of brush options to choose from, but I will be using the Monoline pen (under calligraphy) exclusively for this tutorial. Usually you’ll want to use different types of brushes if you are drawing a sketch or doodling something specific that requires a different type of texture. 

Using Stamp Sets and Pattern Paper

Stamp sets and pattern paper are a great way to make digital stickers in a much quicker way. You can make an entire set in just a few minutes with these so that is always something to try out if you don’t want to spend a lot of time creating stickers. You can get these off of Etsy and lots of shops usually bundle up their products so you could grab a great deal.

Quick tip: If you plan on selling your stickers, be sure to purchase stamp sets and pattern paper that allows you to sell using their designs. You’ll want to look for products that say “for commercial use.” The same goes for fonts you use for stickers. If you are unsure, you can always message the seller and ask.

How to Create Variations of Stickers

Before I start showing you specific sticker designs, I think it’s important that you know about some helpful features within Procreate so that you can customize each sticker design to your liking.

Creating variations of stickers is super easy and you can do this by creating multiple layers that can be edited using different colors.

For example, I can grab one of my heart stamp stickers, I’ll choose a color and then size it to my liking. You can also change the opacity of the sticker if you’d like.

Adding Shadows to Stickers

Adding shadows to your stickers is pretty simple with the layers panel. Go into your layers panel and duplicate your sticker. Once your sticker is duplicated, select the bottom layer and choose a dark gray or black color to fill in the sticker with.

Next, tap on the magic wand and choose ‘Gaussian Blur’ and make sure ‘Layer’ is selected. Now, keeping your pencil on the screen, slowly slide it to the right so that you can increase the blur percentage. When it looks good to you, you can go back to the layers panel, click the ‘N’ icon and decrease the opacity so it doesn’t look so dark.

Once you’re sure that your sticker is just the way you like it, you can pinch the layers together to flatten them. This means that the sticker will look exactly like what’s on the canvas once you go ahead and save it.

Tip: If you’d like to save a shadow version and a non-shadow version of your sticker, you can also ‘Group’ the layers together instead of flatten the design.

Shapes and Icons

Washi tape

Words and Phrases

Words and phrases stickers are some of my favorite stickers to add to my planners. Going back to what I mentioned earlier, be sure that you have commercial use fonts if you will be selling your designs. If they are for personal use, it doesn’t matter which font you use because they are for yourself.

I usually go for commercial-use fonts simply because I may not want to start out selling the stickers I create but maybe eventually I will and it’s just easier to know that I have permission to sell my designs without going through the hassle of figuring it out later on.

Post it Notes and To-do Lists

Picture Frames

How to Save Your Stickers

Now that we’re ready to save these stickers, we have a few options. You can either use a Split Screen and drag your stickers over to your planner from the layers panel on Procreate.

Or, you can save them as PNG stickers to your photo album and either bring them into your planner using Split Screen or by using the camera roll icon within Goodnotes or other apps you may be using.

If you save them to your camera roll, you’ll notice that it has all the stickers on one sheet. You can easily duplicate the image and crop out each individual sticker so that it’s saved individually to your camera roll. Whatever works best for you!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you’re interested in grabbing the stickers I created for this tutorial, you can grab them for free over on my freebie library.

Until next time, happy planning!

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