Valentine’s Day DIY Gift Idea: Sticker Album

I don’t know about most of you guys, but in Brazil, I grew up with those Sticker Albums, that were basically a way to promote movies, cartoons, and sports. The boys would all have soccer sticker albums, and the girls had the latest Disney movie album (Aladdin was my first!). We would trade stickers so we could complete our albums, and it was so much fun.

So much fun, that even now, at 30 years old, I still like them. Latest one I got was for the Harry Potter last movie. And also, I used it as an inspiration to make a (sort-of) DIY gift for my boyfriend for Christmas. I used Blurb.com to create the album, Moo.com to make the stickers, and then I bought a few tiny envelopes to sort the stickers into. Of course, this is a DIY that requires a certain knowledge of design tools, like InDesign, or Photoshop, but I do think it’s possible to make it happen with Blurb’s BookSmart! Here’s your steps:

1. Select all photos you’d like to print as stickers (this would be a cool project to do as a portfolio too, with your design work, very interactive), make sure they’re all with high resolution. Personal tip, don’t choose too many, or the project gets overwhelming. I had 50, which was the minimum Moo would print, so perfect.

2. Know the size of your sticker, then make the pages with the little blank spots where the stickers go. I designed the pages by theme, so they would have the captions and all that. Number all your blank spaces. Important: know the size your stickers will print, so you can make the blank spaces in that size (a bit smaller is even better!). Here’s what one of my pages looked like (designed on photoshop):

3. When your album is all set and created, send it to print on Blurb.com, and send your pictures to print on Moo.

4. Then you wait… Sigh! In the meantime, I bought cute glossy envelopes to fit my stickers.

5. Stickers and album arrive!  and I sorted all stickers and wrote the numbers where they went on the album behind them (use a soft pen so it doesn’t leave a mark on the sticker). Then I  mixed them so they wouldn’t be in order on the envelope (I put 3-4 stickers per envelope). I packaged everything up and gifted the album and 3 packs of stickers to the boyfriend! Then each day I’d give him 2 more, so it took a few weeks for him to complete the album. It was something we did together, so it was a lot of fun.

And what’s cooler is that Blurb.com has a promo code going on now thru Valentine’s day! Print a photo book (my sticker album was totally a photo book!) and you can get 20% on your entire order of photo books | Code: MYBOOKLOVE.

Blurb.com sent me this promo code with a sample post: “Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, why not create a Blurb photo book filled with your favorite moments for that special someone. Instagram books and Facebook books are quick and easy to create and make the perfect little gift for the one you love.” But I thought.. Hey, I have an EVEN BETTER idea. Hope you like it, and I’d love to see the books you create with it!!