Making the Stickers

The stickers used to decorate the box are a whole process by themselves. I designed these custom stickers using the programs Gimp and Open Office. Both programs are free downloads on the internet. They work great and are easy to use.
Designing the stickers is pretty easy. first you need to find a picture. I used Google images. Next you need to save the picture. Then open it up in Gimp where you can use the threshold tool to change the image to black and white. You can then vary the amounts of each color to make the image look the best.
Then I imported the altered image into Open Office. Here you can alter the dimensions and make borders around the image. Once your done with this you should save it and export the image as a .jpg. It is very important that it is saved a a .jpg. Email the file to yourself.
Finally I logged onto the vinyl cutter computer. Here I open up the program Cut Studio. Cut Studio works with the Rolands Vinyl Cutter. Open up your email and import the picture file. Then go into cut studio and import the file. Once it is imported, you need to right click on the image and select image properties. Then click "extract image outline". This will outline your image in blue. You then drag away the image leaving the blue outline lines. You can now delete the initial image but keep the outline. From here you can copy the image and alter its dimensions. Now load the vinyl cutter with sufficient paper and cut.
Once the sticker is cut, the next step is weeding it. This is when you remove any unneeded pieces of loose vinyl. Either use the images negative or positive. To make a 2 color sticker, just make a rectangle of a different color that will fit behind the top layer. now use transfer tape and stick it on.