Street Art Stickers: A Rundown On Slaps

Have you ever wondered about all those stickers you see on light posts, buildings, and signs all over cities? Or maybe you wanted to put some up yourself. Those stickers are a form of street art known as slaps, slap tagging, or sticker bombing. What it is called kind of just depends on what part of the country you are from.

Although some slaps do make urban areas look more attractive, they're there for more than just to look pretty. Some slaps are there for the sole purpose of getting the artist's political points or agendas across. Slaps can also promote (or condemn) films, artists, musicians, and other performing artists or influential people. Occasionally they are used to mark gang or drug territories.

Some of them, like most of mine are just for fun, to either entertain, uplift or confuse people. If you want to put up stickers they don't have to make any sense, or put across any important political message. If you want you want you can just make stickers of things you like.

These are a few of my stickers and a couple by Shepard Fairey.

Street artists can use many different types of stickers to print their designs on. Paper stickers are very common; paper stickers are prone to fading after a certain period of time, however, they are cheap or free and get the job done. Vinyl stickers are also very popular as well. Vinyls are the same material that bumper stickers are made out of. These stickers are much more durable than paper ones,  are less likely to fade, and they are a lot more weather proof.

This is what you an expect your paper stickers to look like after a few months outside. 

Paper Stickers

There are a lot of different ways to make paper stickers. You can hand draw designs onto mailing labels or blank sticker sheets. You can make stencils and spray paint your designs. If you know how to use photoshop, bamboo,  or some other design software you can make a design on a computer and either get printer paper and print some at home, or if you want to make a large number of stickers for the lowest price you can get your stickers printed at Kinko's or any number of other online printing companies. 

If you are going to get your stickers printed on paper I suggest the high gloss over matte. Even though that doesn't make them weather proof by any means it does make them a little more weather resistant. 

here are a few hand drawn stickers on mailing labels. 

Vinyl Stickers

Vinyl stickers are long lasting, weather resistant, and washable. They can be exposed to all sorts of conditions. The greatest thing about vinyl is that it can be exposed to sunlight, rain, dry or humid conditions. They are great for outdoor use, that is why they make bumper stickers with vinyl.
They do cost more then paper, but if you buy them in bulk then they aren't too much more.

The blue Dalek sticker has been on that mail box for the same amount of time as the paper stickers and it still looks new.

Clear Stickers

Clear stickers are the same as vinyl stickers, they are just printed on clear/transparent vinyl instead of white. They are good for glass surfaces or other surfaces where you only want to show your design and not have a white or colored background. Most printing places charge a little more for the clear stickers then for white vinyl, but they are a good alterative sometimes if you want a more clean cut look without having to spend the extra money on die-cut stickers.
If you just wanted to make a small batch of stickers and and don't want to have them printed you can make them at home. Clear sticker sheets for your printer are available at Staples, Office Depot or pretty much any place that has a decent office supply section.

This is a sticker that was printed at home. 

Die Cut Stickers

Die Cut stickers are vinyl stickers that are custom cut to whatever shape you want them to be. They can be printed on white or clear vinyl. These are the most expensive stickers, but they look really awesome. One company that does die cut stickers is Sticker Robot and they are really great with their customers. If you wanted a die cut look, but can't afford a custom sticker you could just get standard shaped stickers and then hand cut each one, but that would take a long time.

These are a few die cut on white vinyl stickers. 

Sticker Robots tutorial on how to make your custom sticker designs on photoshop 

If you didn't want to try and design your own stickers right away and you just wanted to buy some stickers from someone else first to see if you like it a lot of street artists sell some of their stickers to help offset the cost of printing them. You can find them on Ebay, Etsy, or various other websites. Just google street art stickers for sale, or go to ebay or etsy and just type in street art stickers and some stuff should come up. You can find them individually, in multi packs or in bulk packs. You can also find some in local skate shops in a lot of bigger cities.

If you have stickers printed already sometimes you can find other artists that are willing to do trades with you. I personally just randomly give stickers away on my Notti By Nature facebook page.