I want share where my sticker ideas come from. The honest answer is: everywhere. A mood I'm chasing, something I stumble across, a performance that stops me mid-scroll and makes me feel something I want to hold onto.

The Tita Era sticker started with Bad Bunny.

If you watched the Super Bowl performance, you know the moment. There's a song where he references his tita, and something about it just landed. For me, tita carries a very specific kind of energy. It's millennial Filipino auntie who walks into a room and owns it without trying. Unbothered, feminine, a little bit extra in the best possible way. When I heard that song I thought, that's a feeling worth celebrating. That's a sticker.

This is how I made it, from that first thought all the way to a finished cut sticker, using the exact process I use for every design.

Step 1: The idea

Not every sticker idea comes from a Super Bowl halftime show, but this one did and I'm not sorry about it.

My ideas usually come from one of two places. Either I'm chasing a specific mood or theme I want to capture, or something hits me out of nowhere and I just know immediately that it needs to exist as a sticker. The Tita Era was firmly in the second category. I knew the concept the moment it formed in my head: typography celebrating that tita energy, surrounded by flowers to lean into the femininity of it.

I also do light trend research when I'm planning new designs. I look at what's resonating on Etsy and Pinterest, not to copy what's already there but to understand what people are connecting with. Florals and celebration stickers are consistently strong, so I knew this concept had legs beyond just my own excitement about it.

When an idea feels both personally meaningful and trend-aware, that's usually the green light to start sketching.

Step 2: The sketchbook

Before I open Procreate, I go to my sketchbook.

For the Tita Era sticker, this step was actually pretty quick because the concept was clear in my head from the start. I sketched out the rough layout: where the typography would sit, how much space the flowers would take up around it, what kind of overall shape the sticker would be. It wasn't detailed or pretty. It was just enough to get the idea out of my head and onto paper so I could look at it.

This is the part of my process I'd encourage every beginner to keep. It's tempting to go straight to your iPad when you have an idea because digital tools feel more productive. But there's something about a quick hand sketch that lets you make fast decisions without getting precious about them. You can cross things out, try a different layout in the margin, and move on in two minutes. That kind of loose thinking is harder to do when you're already in a design app.

My sketchbook doesn't look impressive. But it's where everything starts.

Step 3: Building it in Procreate

This is where the Tita Era sticker actually became itself.

I brought my rough sketch concept into Procreate and started with the typography. Lettering is something I genuinely love and also something I'm still developing, so this part of the process is always a mix of flow and frustration depending on the day. For this sticker, it came together fairly smoothly because I had a clear feeling I was chasing. I wanted the letters to feel celebratory and feminine without being overly delicate. Bold enough to read well at sticker size, but with enough personality to feel hand-drawn.

Once the type felt right, I built the flowers around it. I draw my florals freehand in Procreate using the Apple Pencil, which lets me keep that hand-drawn quality even in a fully digital illustration. I'm not going for botanical accuracy. I'm going for feeling. Loose petals, simple leaves, the kind of flowers that feel like they belong on something joyful.

The color choices came last. I wanted to honor that tita energy, which to me reads as warm, rich, and unapologetically feminine. I kept the palette focused rather than throwing every color at it. A tight color story makes a sticker feel intentional rather than busy.

Step 4: Preparing the file and printing

Once the design was finished in Procreate, I exported it and prepared it for print.

This is the less romantic part of the process but it matters just as much. I make sure my file is at the right resolution for printing, I do a test print first to check my colors, and I adjust if anything looks off from what I see on screen. My printer and my screen don't always agree, so I've learned to save the hex codes of colors that print accurately and build my palettes around those.

For a typography sticker with florals, getting the colors right on print is especially important because the details are small and any muddiness in the ink shows up quickly.

Step 5: Cutting with the Silhouette Portrait 4

This is still my favorite part.

I bring the file into Silhouette Studio, set up the cut lines, and let the machine do what it does. Watching the blade trace cleanly around the letters and flowers of a design I made from a random moment of inspiration is genuinely one of the most satisfying feelings in this whole process.

The Tita Era sticker came out exactly how I pictured it. Typography, florals, that celebratory feminine energy all the way through. It went straight into my shop.

The whole process, start to finish

Inspiration, sketchbook, Procreate, print, cut. That's it. It doesn't always go smoothly and it doesn't always go fast, but that's the shape of it.

What I want you to take from this is that your process doesn't have to be complicated or perfectly optimized to produce something real. Mine started with a Super Bowl performance, a feeling about what it means to be in your tita era, and a sketchbook that nobody else will ever see. The sticker it produced is now sitting in my shop, ready for someone who gets it.

That's enough.

If you're working on your own first sticker designs and want to talk through the process, leave a comment below. I'd love to hear what's inspiring your ideas right now.

When I decided to open my sticker shop, one of the first things I did was look up what tools other artists were using. I went down a rabbit hole of reviews, YouTube videos, and forum threads. It was overwhelming. Everyone seemed to have a different opinion and a very long list of things I apparently needed to buy.

I didn't want to do that to you.

So this is simply what I use. Not what's perfect, not what every sticker artist swears by. Just what's actually sitting on my desk right now, what I reach for depending on the design I'm working on, and how I honestly feel about each one after using them regularly.

This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you 🤗

The Sketchbook

Everything starts here.

Before anything gets digital, before any marker touches proper paper, my sketchbook is where ideas live first. I use it to make rough drafts, jot down sticker concepts, work out compositions, and sometimes just doodle without any pressure or purpose. It's the most low-stakes part of my whole process and honestly one of my favorites because of that.

If you're starting a sticker shop and feeling like you need a lot of fancy tools right away, a simple sketchbook is genuinely all you need to begin. Start there.

The iPad and Apple Pencil

This is where my sketches grow up.

Once I have a rough idea I'm happy with from my sketchbook, I bring it into the iPad to digitize and refine it. I use Procreate, which gives me full control over clean linework, color, and composition without needing a desktop setup. Some of my sticker designs skip the sketchbook entirely and are drawn straight on the iPad when the idea is clear enough in my head from the start.

Between the sketchbook and the iPad, I have a workflow that feels flexible enough to actually fit into my life.

The Ohuhu Water-Based Markers

These were one of my first purchases when I had to rebuild my art supplies stock after moving to Hawaii, and I have zero regrets.

I draw a lot of my sticker designs by hand before anything goes digital, and I needed markers that would give me good color without bleeding through my paper when I do my sketches. The Ohuhu water-based markers do exactly that. The colors are vibrant, they layer nicely, and they don't smell like you're working inside a chemical factory, which matters a lot when you have a toddler in the house.

Honestly, I was a little skeptical at first because they're not the most expensive option out there. But that's actually part of why I love them. As a beginner who was still figuring out whether this shop was even going to work, I didn't want to invest heavily in supplies before I knew what I was doing. These let me start creating without that pressure.

If you're just starting out and you draw by hand, these are the ones I'd point you to first. You can find them here.

The Silhouette Portrait 4

This one felt like a big commitment when I bought it, and I won't pretend I wasn't nervous about it. It took me weeks to finally decide and remove it from my cart. It's expensive so I had to time my purchase and make sure I got the best price.

A cutting machine felt like the moment things got serious. It meant I was really doing this. I chose the Silhouette Portrait 4 after a lot of research, mostly because it's compact enough for a small workspace, which is all I have right now, and because the software gives you a lot of control over how your designs get cut. I was actually supposed to get the Cricut Joy, but I spent so long deciding that it sold out. Blessing in disguise, honestly.

The learning curve is real. I won't sugarcoat that. I wasted a lot of materials figuring it out. But once I got the hang of the settings and found the right pressure for my sticker paper, it became the most satisfying part of the whole process. Watching it cut cleanly around a design I drew by hand feels like a small miracle every single time.

If you're considering a cutting machine for a small sticker shop, this is the one I'd recommend for a beginner with limited space. You can check it out here.

The Printer

Before the Silhouette can cut anything, something has to print it. That's where my Canon printer comes in.

I'll be honest with you because that's the whole point of this blog: it has not been perfect. The wireless connection is inconsistent, and the colors came out much duller than I expected, especially compared to what I see on my screen. I've tried a lot of fixes and I'm still working through it.

But here's what I've learned from that struggle. I now test print every design before I commit to a full sheet, and I save the hex codes of colors that print accurately so I can match them in my drawing and editing apps. It's an extra step, but it's taught me a lot about color accuracy that I wouldn't have learned otherwise.

Every printer comes with its own quirks. Whatever you choose, test your colors early, save what works, and build your palette around what your specific printer does well.

How it all works together

Depending on the design, my process looks a little different. Some stickers start as hand-drawn sketches with the Ohuhu markers, others I design fully on the iPad and go straight to print. The mix keeps things interesting and means I'm not locked into one way of doing things.

It's not a perfect setup. It's a beginner's setup. But it works, it fits my space, it fits my budget, and it's produced real stickers that are now sitting in my Etsy shop waiting for their first home.

That feels like enough for right now.

If you have questions about any of these tools or you're trying to figure out what to start with, leave a comment below. I'm figuring this out the same as you, and I'm happy to share what I know so far.

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Thanks for stopping by! I love sharing the ups and downs of building a creative life like studio experiments, everyday joys, and the little sparks that remind us to keep making. If that inspires you to pick up some art supplies and create too, come hang out with me on Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook, subscribe to my YouTube for art vlogs and Simple Joys casual vlogs, and join my email club for seasonal notes on living creatively. 🌿