How to Print Latin Stickers: Step-by-Step Guide for Teachers
Custom Latin stickers are a great way to add some fun and novelty to your Latin classes! Here is how to print them right from your home or school printer as well as some tips and tricks to get the most out of them!
Step 1: Pick The Label Sheets You Want to Use
If you search “Avery Easy Peel Address Labels” you will likely see a wide variety of blank label packs that come in all sizes and shapes. There are some other brands out there like Uline, but personally I like the Avery ones because I can find them at my local Walmart.
Before you start designing you will want to decide what size, shape, and quantity you want to use for your sticker. I have tried the circles and they are fun, but tricky to print right. When circle stickers are printed a little off-center it is a lot more noticable.
Personally, I highly recommend the small rectangular ones (about 1-inch by 2-and-5/8ths inch). You can fit a Latin/Classics-themed icon and some text on it easily and they go nicely on binders and communication journals.
My three personal favorites for the classroom are…
White blank labels (8160)
Gold foil labels (8987)
Silver foil labels (8986)
All of which come in nice 30-label sheets.
The label packs can usually be found at your local office supply store, an online store, or at the official Avery website. At time of writing the blank white ones mentioned above go for about $14 for a pack of 750 blank stickers, but you can also buy in bulk for cheaper. The gold and silver blank labels go for about $18 for a pack of 300 labels, so I like to save those for special occasions like acing a test. Either way, at 6¢-each for the gold/silver stickers and 1.8¢-each for the white ones, home-printed stickers are a very affordable way to add some fun to a Latin class!
Once you know what size, shape, and color sticker you want to design on and have picked a sheet type to match, you can move on to the next step.
Step 2: Match the Label Sheets to the Template
See the four or five digit number on the sticker packs? That number is important because it will help you figure out which label sheets go with which digital templates. The templates are what you will use when designing the stickers. Make a note of that number. If you have an off-brand sticker pack, you can often find a bit of text that reads “Avery 8160 equivalent”, or something along those lines, so check for that if you are buying with one brand, but designing as if it were another.
You can find pretty much any template you could want at theAvery official website here:
Double-check to make sure you matched the number on the labels pack you purchased with the template number before you start designing!
From here you basically have two options:
- Option A: Use Avery's "Design & Print Online" feature which lets you create the sticker design on the Avery website itself and download as a PDF for printing onto the labels.
- Option B: Download a blank template from Avery, Uline, or elsewhere that works with your favorite word-processor (MS Word, Apple Pages, etc.) and design it in your word-processor.
Option A is really convenient if you know you want the whole sheet of labels to be the same design.
Option B is better if you want a mix of stickers on a single printed sheet or if you are very proficient in your favorite word-processor and would prefer to stick to using that.
At this point, you are ready to design!
Step 3: Design the sticker
The fun part! You can honestly make the stickers look however you want. Go crazy with fonts, add images, QR codes, and more. There are also a lot of pre-designed stickers to pick from and customize if you do not want to start from scratch.
For Latin class stickers, I like to stick to a simple black-and-white Classics-themed icon on the left or the right taking up a third of the sticker, with large text taking up the rest. There's a lot of great clip-art online that can be copy-pasted in quickly.
When you are finished designing, you can print onto the label sheets you have.
Step 4: Print your Sticker
Feed the label sheet into your printer either in the main tray or in the alternate/bypass tray if you have one, then hit "Print". Out should appear a sheet of your custom Latin stickers!
Classroom-tested Tips, Tricks, and Suggestions
- Adding some Classically-themed clipart helps make them more memorable. You can find tons of it online.
- I found a lot of success using the White label sheets for commonly passed out stickers and the Gold and Silver label sheets for special occasions. Here are some sticker suggestions that have worked great for me:
White stickers
[Clipart of Laurel Wreath] Latin Review Game Winner
[Clipart of video game-style achievement icon] Achievement Unlocked: Attended my first Latin class
[Clipart of video game-style achievement icon] Achievement Unlocked: Made it to Fall Break!
[Clipart of video game-style achievement icon] Achievement Unlocked: Learned the 1st Declension
Gold and Silver stickers:
Gold: [Clipart of Laurel Wreath with the letter A inside it] I got an A on my Latin test!
Gold: [Clipart of Roman coin] I gave 100% in Latin class today!
Silver: [Clipart of Laurel Wreath with the letter B inside it] I got a B on my Latin test!
Silver: [Clipart of the Colosseum] Attended Latin student hours - After an in-class review game, I usually hand everyone on the winning team a "Latin Review Game Winner" sticker. A funny side effect is that students would start to compete among themselves to see who could get the most of those stickers by the end of the year. Often a little competition did a lot more to motivate students to review Latin vocab than any amount of pleading and exhortation from me.
- Do you use a clipboard like I do? If so, throw some "I brought my A-game to Latin class" sticker sheets into the bottom of your clipboard, so you always have them ready to reward extra effort.
- I have also found that sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek stickers were also very popular among my students. Stickers like I Survived Learning Participles, Achievement Unlocked: I Remembered My Latin Book, or stickers involving Latin-class inside jokes were often a hit.
Thanks for reading!
Resources
Want to try it out right away? Check out some pre-made sticker design PDFs in the below!
Download template: Latin Review Game Winner (8160)Got an A on Latin test (8987)Got an B on Latin test (8986)Attended Latin Student Hours stickers (8986)