Personal Bug Stickers With Silhouette Portrait

One of our makerspace members is lucky enough to have an insect named after her! We decided to make her some personalized bug stickers.

This project was created during YuKonstruct's Silhouette Build Night.

YuKonstruct is the first makerspace in Canada's north. Our mission is to provide access to shared space, quality tools, available expertise, and a collaborative environment to help makers build anything!

First we located some images of the insect we wanted online (much easier than finding real specimens).

We found it here after a quick search of it's latin name on ZooKeys.

We imported the screenshot of the insect into the Silhouette Studio software.

We used the trace tool to create the outline of the bug. We selected the area to trace and set it to trace the outer edge.

After we had an outline, we copied it a couple of times. Three bugs are better than one!

We used the Silhouette Portrait to cut the insect stickers out of adhesive-backed vinyl.

Setting up cutting jobs on the Portrait is very simple compared to some other digital cutters (YuKonstruct also has a KNK Zing). We placed a sheet of black vinyl on a cutting mat, smoothing out any air bubbles. We loaded the cutting mat into the machine and set the blade to the recommended setting for vinyl. The Silhouette Studio software automatically sets the speed when you select the material and send the job to the cutter.

Once the cutting was done, we pulled off the excess vinyl.

We decided to stick the bugs in one of our makerspace washrooms.

To transfer the bugs to the washroom wall we used transfer tape. Transfer tape really helps get all the little bits, like the antenna and legs, down without tears or wrinkles. The sticky transfer tape was applied over the vinyl bugs and then they were peeled off of their backing paper. We then stuck the bugs to the wall, carefully smoothing out any air bubbles.