Grassroot Graphics Bumper Stickers

The bumper stickers shown below as single thumbnails are printed three-to-a-page (letter size) in PDF files to make “bulk” printing easier and to save waste of the special bumper-sticker paper you’ll need to print them on. Below the thumbnails, I’ve listed several Internet sources of help, if you’ve never made bumper stickers before.

I've also listed several Internet sources for purchasing bumper-sticker paper; prices vary since the paper comes in either water- or non-water-resistant varieties. (Keep in mind that if you aren’t able to find “weatherproof” paper — or don’t want anything with adhesive stuck to your car bumper — you can print the stickers on any heavy paper for display inside the car, at the bottom of the rear window.

Help and Paper Sources

How you make your bumper stickers depends largely on the type of bumper-sticker paper you buy. If you find paper that has been coated to help make it weather-proof, you need only print as many copies of your chosen PDF file as you want finished bumper stickers (remembering that each PDF page contains three stickers).

Some sticker papers are water-resistant rather than waterproof. If you use this type, the sources I found online suggest spraying each page of stickers with clear acrylic or a product made especially for coating inkjet printouts. (One brand of the latter is called Jet Coat, available here.)

A more elaborate method of producing bumper stickers involves enclosing each in a laminate “sleeve.” See “How to Make Your Own Bumper Stickers” at the bottom of the Web page here.

An alternative to bumper stickers is the decal, printed on clear cling film and then applied to the inside of your car’s rear window. See Inkjet Window Cling, available here, or Clear Kling Sheets (Item # 524), sold here. Note that this method requires a reverse PDF graphic. If you have access both to graphics software (Photoshop or CorelDRAW, for example) that lets you horizontally flip an image, and to the full application of Adobe Acrobat (in order to re-distill the PDF file after reversing it), you can do this yourself. If you don’t have such access, e-mail me the name of the PDF file you want reversed, and I’ll be happy to e-mail it back — provided, of course, that your e-mail program and your ISP allow you to receive e-mail attachments!

A few of the places I’ve found on the Internet where bumper-sticker paper is sold: