Making Stickers in Adobe Illustrator for Printing and Cutting on the Roland BN-20

MAKING STICKERS IN ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR FOR PRINTING AND CUTTING ON THE ROLAND BN-20

Before you begin these instructions you MUST do these steps:

FIND AN IMAGE

Use Chrome to find an image you would like to download to use for your sticker. Two-finger click on the image and select "Save Image As..." to download the file. It can be a file in any of these formats: .jpg, .png, .svg, or .pdf.

Give the file a good name and save it in a folder where you can easily find it again. Here, I'm saving it to Documents. Click Save

CREATE AN ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR FILE

Open Adobe Illustrator

Click on New file. A window appears.

Select Web
Change scale to Inches
Make your document the size you want your sticker to be. In this example I am using, 4 in by 4 in
Click Create.
A white box appears, showing the size of your new sticker.

INSERT YOUR IMAGE

File -> Place

Locate the image you saved in Chrome by changing which folder you are opening, and click Place.

Click in the top-left corner of the white box on your screen, to place the image there.

It may be very large. If so, zoom out [command -] until you can see the whole image.

Hold down SHIFT key and drag the bottom-right corner to shrink the image to fit inside your white box.

The SHIFT key helps you scale proportionately, so that the image is not distorted.

(My image is not a square, so there is a white space on the bottom.)

NOTE: If you see a big X across your image, you need to click the embed button in the Properties panel on the right under Quick Access. (In this example, the image is embedded, so I don't need to do this step.)

RESIZE AND ALIGN

I resized the bird image a bit smaller using SHIFT and the corner dot.

To center it on the page, use the Align tools on the right.

ADDING TEXT

Add text to your image using the Text tool (T) on the left. Click on the T. Click on the page.

Some Latin text will appear. Type in your own words to replace the latin.

When finished, click on the Arrow in the top-left of the window.

Resize the text while holding SHIFT and dragging the blue dots.

Change the font using the Character tools on the right. There is a menu full of fonts.

Center the text by scrolling down on the right-side and using the align tools again.

ADDING A CUT LINE BOX AROUND YOUR IMAGE

Draw a box around your image to create the cut line for the sticker.

Two-finger click on the Rectangle tool to show all the shapes. In this example l use the Rounded Rectangle Tool.

The new shape will cover your image.

Click on the small arrow to flip the Stroke and Fill Values.

Now the border of the shape is black but the fill is empty.

USE ROLAND VERSAWORKS PINK COLOR FOR THE CUT LINE

Watch the gif, above, to see these steps:

1. Select the shape that is the border of your sticker.

2. Click on the stroke color (currently black).

3. Under Swatch Libraries button, select Roland Versaworks.

4. click on the Fusia, to make the stroke color of your border the pink needed to be a cut line.

Change the Stroke line thickness of the border to be 0.1pt.

SAVE AND SHARE YOUR FILE

File -> Save As

Give it a good filename, one that describes your project and has your name in it.

Click Save.

Share it with largeprinting@meadowbrook-ma.org.

You are finished working on your laptop. Now you will go to the desktop PC attached to the Roland BN-20 and follow these steps to print it on the large printer. (They should be printed on paper and on the desk next to the desktop PC.)

For a more detailed tutorial, creating a sticker that has an irregular shape as an outline, watch this video tutorial made by Mr. Schmid.