Printing Your Own Sticky Notes

Sticky Notes and QR Codes

Craig Nansen

craig.nansen@gmail.com

@cnansen on Twitter

You don’t need to purchase or copy templates to be able to print onto your own sticky notes!

You can quickly and easily make your own templates using Google Drawings.

Step one: open a new Google Drawings document.

Step two: insert a square shape - the size doesn’t matter.

Step three: select the box (or rectangle), under Format select “Format Options” and then click on the “Size and Position” and change the width and height to match the size of the sticky note you plan to use. I used 3” x 3” in this example.

Step four: Make sure you have a border on the box - we want the box to print so we can make a template to use later.

Step five: select the box and “Duplicate” it from the “Edit” menu, or type Command-D.

Step six: move the new box anywhere you want on the page.

Step seven: repeat the Duplicate and move steps as many times as you would like.

Note: - you don’t need to worry about where the boxes are or how they are lined up (unless you want to take the time to do so).

Step eight: Print the page you just made. This will be your template.

Step nine: Place a sticky note on each of the squares. (You don’t have to put them on all the squares if you only want to print one or two sticky notes.) Place the template back in the printer, making sure the “sticky” part of the sticky notes goes in first so they don’t get stuck in the printer!

Step ten: Going back to your Google Drawings, add whatever content you want to each of the boxes. I have used QR Codes in my example. When you print again these will print exactly where the boxes are on the template you are running through - except the sticky notes are there instead.

I got the idea for making my own “sticky notes” templates from Tony Vincent and Matt Miller. They both used Google Slides. I have always wondered why they prefer Google Slides over Google Drawings. The only reason I can think of is that you can have multiple slides in one “document” using Google Slides instead of individual drawings. Is there any other reason to use Slides over Drawings?

Print Custom Sticky Notes with Google Slides

From Learning in Hand with Tony Vincent

Google Slides sticky note brainstorming: Powerful planning

Using Google Slides - From Ditch that textbook with Matt Miller

I used this as an example to show that you don’t have to worry about lining up the boxes in the template like you would if you were using Avery labels.