Tip from a designer: add what is called a "bleed" to your sticker graphics, so there's a bit of extra color around the edges that you're meant to cut into. That will make sure you don't get the white bits of the sticker.
@@docdelete 100%, i ran a large scale production cnc machine for a while, and the number of times our designers didn't do this was kind of absurd. you'll never get perfect alignment of print and cut edges even with machines that cost $100k+. just print way lots of bleed, and the cut is the only line that matters.
@@brentbarnett8845 Apparently you're the only person who actually watched the video lol. 8:58 "The other thing is, I can still see white around here, and so I've got to figure out the *bleed.* I gotta figure out how to make the cut lines a little over the ink, so that it comes out edge-to-edge like a real sticker."
@@cobytenpenny5269 Cricut did a U-turn on the charge for using the software. My daughter got a Cricut last year and never paid anything to use the software.
@@cobytenpenny5269 Cricut walked back those changes and doesn’t require monthly charges (due to customer outcry). Silhouette however wants to charge you to use SVG files.
I can’t wait to see Seth wrap his head around a 3D printer. Even with something as turn key as a Prusa, they can be a bit infuriating at first but once you nail settings and understand why a print or design fails, it easily becomes one of the most rewarding and useful hobbies to have.
Nailing down 3D-printing might take weeks or even months. This could segway Seth from biking world to a different realm. With the bike park opening and his own backyard trail system, I guess it is best that Seth just collaborates with some 3D printing channel and not do it by himself. IMHO
Prusa is the exact thing i wouldnt recommand for beginners. Just get a resin 3d printer, you get started in few minutes, very easy to use and maintain. For 300$, you can get an eleego mars 2 pro which is litterally the best printer of this size you can get. Prints looks like molded plastic, it's insane.
your videos are always awesome! I would recommend using a scalpel instead of a scissor for the details on the sticker! (if you dont have a vinyl cutter)
Remember when you thought we wouldn't watch you do chores? Remember when you thought Making your dogs omelets was content that wouldn't do well? You just Diagnosed Printer problems for 11 minutes straight and I was enthralled. You never fail to impress me, Seth.
This could not be any more timely, relatable or hysterical. We got a Circut at work for doing exactly this, making stickers, and even with my engineering degree it took the better part of a day and a 90 minute technical support phone call to calibrate the photo sensor to the knife point cutting location to get accurate cuts. The tictoc moms being the only source of technical support on RU-vid could also not be more true... Monogram everything.
Another option for making your stickers even more durable is to buy clear vinyl and add on top of your printed sheet, but without proper equipment it might be tricky get a good result and its going to be a bit harder to cut.
As someone in the print industry (I print thousands of stickers a month), I recommend doing a cold laminated instead of acrylic spray. Not only are you trying to protect the print from water, you also want to protect it from uv light and chemicals. The spray will chip and deteriorate where the cold laminate will have a stronger protection.
me working at a vinyl print shop watching this hahahah but honestly Seth that's pretty hard to figure out without anyone teaching you at first and i've had an encounter with the specific brand of plotter before so nice work you did pretty good for doing it pretty much alone
Great video. A little tip when you're taking the vinyl off the sticky mat, to keep your vinyl from curling up remove the mat from vinyl instead of removing the vinyl from the mat. I hope that makes sense
If you’re doing it by hand, get a metal ruler with a cork backing and a x-acto knife. So easy to do straight lines quickly and you are able to get the little bits left over pretty quickly. Also could use a box cutter with a new blade.
There's a reason why people have started entire businesses making stickers. That ish ain't easy. And glad to see your stoke level matches the effort level. Well done, sir.
My 10 year old sister has one of those sticker things and she is a master at it and she showed me how to use it so when you were trying to figure it out I knew exactly what to do 🤣
For someone who thought their next printer was gonna be a 3D one, you have basically perfectly described how most 3D printers are by the end. There is a setup, a learning curve, and tons of dialing in to do for some printers. :P
Hey seth about 4 years ago I started watching your channel and bought my first bike. Last week I got a Specialized epic comp :) Thanks for getting me into the sport. I love your content
I am really close friends with a guy who used to work making car stickers. For single color stickers you can just buy colored vinyl sticker sheets and cut it straight from the machine. A trick we learned for full color stickers is cutting out individual colors and lining them up to make a complete colored image. Extremely durable stickers.
They do also sell sticker sets for bikes. If it's just one bike you're fixing up, no sense in buying up all this stuff. I think it's worth it for Seth just because he's planning on doing a lot of these.
@@sebastianjost doubt it. Look for the decals in ebay. They go for about 8 bucks a sheet. Just looked up some Giant brand ones. Not sure if they're original or if people make them and sell them, but as you can see, anybody can make pretty decent stickers these days anyway.
Mate, you’re killing me with your application. Dish washing liquid. Spray bottle. Wet everything, sticker and bike. Apply sticker. Slide straight. Wipe with a cloth. Perfect every time.
I feel your pain Seth! My wife bought the Silhouette cutter and it was frustratingly complicated to get to work just as you experienced. And that's coming from someone who's been doing IT for 20 years!
From a fellow vinyl cutter user (cricut). I’d just like to say that this is by far my favorite video of yours!! 😅 I was trying to talk to you through the TV to give you some helpful advice!
Hey Seth love the videos. One technique I use is to make waterslide decals (which can be done with an inkjet printer), then use a 2 part clear coat spray on the whole fork/frame to make it weather resistant.
I just watched a video about making stickers for your bike and yet I was glued to my phone with so much anticipation. Only Seth has the ability to take something like this and make it amazing. I truly look forward to Seth’s videos every week.
Seth, I am not even close to been a mountain biker but I cannot express how thankful I am to have found your channel! I've also learned so much from your content! Thank you sir
When you're kiss-cutting vinyl with a backer, you can usually skip the adhesive mat. Its purpose is to hold the cut elements in place that might move out of place like e.g. a single layer of cardstock.
Hey Seth, it’s not only for TickTock moms! I use this and I don’t only use printable vinyl I actually use permanent vinyl which can handle the weather. also and I put it on my bikes!
I like that. A few months ago I was out maybe 15 miles from home with a flat and no bike shops. I was not prepared. Finally found a yard machine repair shop and the guy there put some goop in my tire and I was able to ride home. Later I was talking to the guys in the produce department and we decided we needed some stickers that say, 'Thank you Gwyneth.'
no idea about bikes but I'm looking to get away from Print on Demand and do my own thing and this REALLY helped me see what I need and what I can do, thank you!
Vinyl cutters are great. We got one used for super cheap but the software just suuuucks. But once you somehow get the hang of it, especially single colored stickers and no printing is super nice and useful! Great vid!
@@StanleyKubick1 yeah without illustrator it would be a mess haha! Even then it's kinda crappy as you still have to use the silhouette software after creating the file with illustrator
Berm Peak Became my Most Favorite Mountain Bike Channel Ever!!! It's just Relaxing watching seth Shred the Trails and Organize and upgrade his Mountain Bikes! Hope this Channel Grows more Bigger and Livelier Than ever!!!
Hey Seth, it’s so funny to see how you struggle with the silhouette. It took me a while but buy colored car wrap und cut it out from there if it’s one color anyway. I already made over hundreds of stickers with it. Cheers Urs
As an engineer that helps my TikTok Aunt with her projects, figuring it out how to work with that same machine and software was the worst, but when you finally do, is so satisfying the amazing patterns that it can make
Hi Seth. I have been watching all of your videos for about a year now. I am a 58 year old retired BMXR from ColoRADo. I love MTN, Road, Gravel, and cruiser riding. Well I am now Finally giving you props for creative content and making me laugh. I love flip bike and now that you are painting some frames and parts and making your own DIY stickers. Nice work dude. TJ in Boulder, ColoRADo
I definitely suggest a cricket, I've used them before with no problems at all. If you get a cricket I'm positively sure that many of people in the comments would be happy to help.
You can buy sheets of whatever color vinyl you want and load those straight into the cutter and cut your decals that way if they are just a single color, that skips the printing step, and you get the bikes frame color showing inside the letters, rather than white.
I have a silhouette vinyl cutter and I’ve had so much fun making custom stickers, t shirts, Not to mention Christmas presents. There’s a learning curve but you’ll get it. If you are interested, mahalo my dude has a good video on how they make custom stickers.
That Silhouette software is actually pretty damn good and even better it's free. But I only use a vinyl cutter for masks when I'm painting. For decals I still use a regular printer on decal transfer paper then spray the clear to seal it. It's always fun to make your own.
Aye awesome to come across this video and learning how to make my own stickers like a pro! Shout out to Seth, I appreciate every bit of stress, and gray hair you gained from making this video!
Another thing you can do with your cutter is cut custom vinyl frame protectors. Put masking tape on your frame where you want to put the protector and draw the shape. Remove the masking tape and scan the shape you drew. Draw the shape in a vector program and cut it out of colored vinyl or clear 3M protector film. Great video!
As a long time Silhouette user, I felt your pain and the range of emotions leading up to the first successful sticker. The final products came out amazing!
I can’t understand how Seth does it. I had been trying to make stickers on my own and gave up. He goes and does it in one day and makes it entertaining to watch. Now I need to try again…
I put the decal on before sealing it. I spray a clear coat on the whole frame/fork. That way the new paint have UV protection and the decal get better water resistance.
I also have one of those Silhouette machines and i absolutly love it. It just gives you so many possibilities, you can make those decals, plotted sticker that look absolutly awesome, but you can also buy sheets, that can be ironed on to t-shirts or cappies, to make your own merch. Those Silhouette machines are awesom to get creative and they absolutly do the job! Im so glad that you also tried it and hope you will let us know what you craft with your machine!
Back in Afghanistan, we used to paint the old frames to make them look new and we would use stickers on all parts of frames and suspension. We would just coat everything after we put the stickers on. Try spraying the coating after you put the stickers. Much more durable. It will be even hard for you to peel them off with your nails.
in theory this is copyright infringement. you are not paying fees for the commercial use of the logo from the company. but i guess that this is just something a company would say is not worth to take to court and would also give a bad image to them. Great work^^
awesome video! when you are printing the sticker you should not draw the outline of the logo but actually leave a big box of color arround it or at least leave a bleed or thick stroke outside the logo, that way you let the cutter determine the exterior shape and you won't get white spots.
I actually went through the same with Silhouette Portait. The hardest thing to figure out was that if the cutting mat is entered along the bumps (where it likely should be), it covers the autoblade adjustment hole - the autoblade does not do the clicks, the blade does not extend and no cutting happens :) Thanks for the inspiration.
Man I feel your pain and your triumph. I got flash backs from watching this. Got into the same thing the other year and the learning curve was borderline twisted. Solid work dude ✌
Using plotters never cut through the backing paper, just kiss cut. If you do, the sheet or vinyl roll will shift from the rollers. You can also creat great stickers with only vinyls of any colors, not just printing.
There’s nothing better than the feeling of figuring something out that should’ve taken a fraction of the time and energy anticipated, after banging your head against the wall all day.
Lol, seeing how Seth struggled with the vinyl cutter makes me think he REALLY isn't ready for a 3D printer. I want to see the day he has to level a bed 😂
you really are going to want to laminate those stickers, with something that has uv inhibitors, 3M vinyl like 3M1080c would be the best and used for wrapping cars and you print and laminate. I worked in large format print and design for years.
What you can do is get some seethrough vinyl and not cut along the shape itself, but maybe as a solid line around it or a millimeter off the shape. What else to remember is that you don't want sharp 90 decree angles on outside stickers, the corners are weak, so have a slight curve on them, keeps the edge on longer.
Forgot to add, extend the image one layer below the cut line or make a image behind the cut line a few mm's wider so you don't get that white line at the edge
I recommend the silhouette plugin for illustrator as it lets you use all the standard illustrator tools (path offsets etc) and print from illustrator itself with the registration marks then lets you send layers to the machine as cuts (with different settings per layer if needed).
Reading the instructions would have been faster! For bike frames, I used this vinyl cutter to create stencils that then allowed me to paint the logo onto the frame. Some clear coat on top of that and it looked awesome. The software wasn't intuitive AT ALL, but once I got the hang of it, results are pretty reproducible. I'm not sure I would recommend the cutter to people either though, it's not particularly intuitive at all, even if the results are pretty good.
i subbed to your channel about 2 or 3 years ago when i was thinking about getting a mtb. i never did end up getting one but i stayed subbed and ive enjoyed every vid youve uploaded, and even tho theyre all different, theyre kinda the same...
I don’t know why, but that was incredibly satisfying to watch. Reminds me of the process I had to go through to design my logos for my jerseys. Over $1,000 spent before I got it right.
My husband did this to my cervelo p2 triathlon bike. It was black, fire engine red, and white. NOT my fave colors. So, he bought amazingly cool vinyl and found the "cervelo" decal online and cut it out with our Cricut (plus the other shapes and designs on the bike). It looks 10000% better!
I bought a Cricut and its such a great machine. Been experimenting with sticker paper and cut settings for a bit. Just trial and error right now and figuring out the perfect algorithm to make the perfect sticker each time.
