Need stickers in a hurry?
One of the most common questions we get at Sticker Workshop is “How long will my stickers take?”
The answer is sometimes surprisingly quick.
Depending on our workload, the quantity you need, whether your artwork is ready to print and how your stickers need to be finished, we can sometimes turn a sticker job around within 24 hours.
But there are also jobs where we’ll deliberately make you wait a little longer.
And there’s a good reason for it.
Why do some sticker jobs take longer than others?
There are several stages involved in producing a custom sticker.
Once your artwork is ready, we need to set up the job, print it, allow appropriate drying time, laminate it if required, cut it and then weed, trim or finish the job depending on what you’ve ordered.
For a straightforward job using print-ready artwork, the process can be very quick.
However, when we’re printing with eco-solvent inks, there are times when the best thing we can do with your freshly printed stickers is leave them alone.
Why do we sometimes wait 24 hours after printing?
Our Roland printers use eco-solvent inks.
Although a print may feel dry quite quickly, that doesn’t necessarily mean all of the solvent contained in the ink has finished escaping from the printed vinyl. This process is commonly called outgassing.
For some jobs, that doesn’t cause us a problem and we can move on to the next stage relatively quickly.
For others, it’s important that we give the print more time.
A common industry recommendation for solvent-printed vinyl is to allow around 24 hours of outgassing before certain finishing processes, particularly lamination.
At Sticker Workshop, that’s the rule of thumb we generally follow when the job requires it.
Laminated stickers need a little patience
If you’ve ordered laminated stickers, we generally allow the freshly printed vinyl to sit for approximately 24 hours before applying the laminate.
Why? Lamination effectively seals the printed surface.
If we laminate too soon, solvent remaining in the print can become trapped beneath the laminate. That can potentially affect the vinyl, adhesive and laminate and contribute to problems such as lifting, curling or other failures later. So even though we may have actually printed your stickers on the day you ordered them, we may not laminate and finish them until the following day. It’s not us being slow.
It’s us not rushing a process that needs time.
Cutting through printed areas can also require extra time
There is another situation where we’re particularly careful: when the cut line passes through a printed area of the sticker.
Imagine a sticker with a coloured background right to the edge. Instead of cutting through unprinted white vinyl around the design, the blade is cutting directly through vinyl that has been covered with ink. If we cut printed eco-solvent vinyl too soon, before it has had sufficient time to outgas and stabilise, the freshly cut edges can be more prone to problems such as curling or lifting.
For those jobs, we’ll often allow approximately 24 hours after printing before completing the final cutting process.
Again, we’d rather give the print the time it needs than rush the job simply so we can say it was finished a few hours earlier.
So, how quickly can you actually make my stickers?
For a simple sticker job with print-ready artwork, no lamination and straightforward cutting, sometimes we can have it ready within 24 hours.
Other jobs may take a few days.
Turnaround will depend on things such as:
- how busy our workshop is
- the quantity of stickers required
- whether your artwork is ready to print
- whether we need to make changes or recreate artwork
- the material being used
- whether your stickers require lamination
- how the stickers need to be cut and finished
- whether the printed vinyl needs additional outgassing time before finishing.
And, of course, a large order of thousands of stickers is going to take longer to print and finish than a run of 20.
What if I need my stickers urgently?
Tell us. This is probably the most important part.
If you’ve suddenly realised you’ve got an event on Friday and it’s already Wednesday, don’t assume it’s too late.
Contact us and tell us What you need, how many you need, what size they are and when you need them.
If you’ve already got the artwork, send that through as well. We’ll look at the job, look at what’s already going through the workshop and tell you what we can realistically do. Sometimes we may be able to squeeze an urgent job into the production schedule and have it ready remarkably quickly.
Other times, particularly if the stickers need lamination or another process that requires appropriate drying time, we’ll tell you that we simply can’t rush that particular part of the job.
Fast is good. Properly made is better.
We pride ourselves on being able to turn around many sticker jobs quickly. We’re a small, hands-on workshop, so we’re not sending your artwork off to another production facility and waiting for it to come back. Your job is produced right here at Sticker Workshop.
But there’s a difference between working quickly and rushing a job. If your stickers can be safely produced in 24 hours, fantastic. If they need another day for the ink to outgas before we laminate or finish them, we’ll give them that day. Because we’d much rather hand you a great set of stickers tomorrow than a rushed set today.
Need stickers by a particular date?
Send us your artwork, quantity, approximate size and the date you need them. We’ll let you know what’s possible!
