I first broke into the sticker scene when my fiancée bought me a printer for Christmas last year. My first goal was simple: to cover my mini fridge entirely with stickers. I have already made great progress on this goal.
After testing a wide variety of designs, I began listing the very best ones for sale here on my website. My dream is for these designs to decorate mini fridges across the globe.
Now that my initial goal is approaching completion, my mission has evolved. Today, I aim to support, uplift and inspire other artists who value having fun over churning out whatever gets the most views online. With my expertise as a bonafide Sticker Man, I’ll help you create a unique line of stickers that promote your work and are guaranteed to stick to a mini fridge.
If you’re interested in collaborating, shoot me a message here and let’s get started.
About tbhopps
A small creative brand built on making art for fun.
The HoppShopp is my where I sell my stickers. Later on I plan to sell other stuff too, but for now it’s just stickers.
Every sticker design I offer has been tested and approved by me to ensure the highest level of mini fridge optimization possible. I would never sell a sticker that I wouldn’t use myself. Every order is printed, hand-cut, put in an envelope and shipped with love and care.
Think of the HoppShopp as less of an industrial sticker factory and more like, I don’t know, like basically just a regular guy who makes stickers for fun. And stuff.
The HoppShopp
Yeah that’s right, I’m about to reveal my entire process. Buckle up, bros.
Most of my sticker designs start out as doodles on good ol’ pen and paper. I like to doodle whenever I’m just sitting around, and I’m often just sitting around so I usually have a pen and paper with me. Most of my doodles never get to be stickers and it’s a little sad, but you learn to be strong about these things with experience.
Unlike those gluttonous, corporate hacks over at Big Sticker, my stickers are designed with absolutely no market research—the very concept of analytics directly conflicts with our core values here at tbhopps dot com. Instead, we prefer our inspiration to happen more organically. For instance, the Music Sticker design came from a hat that I wrote on with a Sharpie to wear to a concert one time. The phrase “Too Hurry To Worry” just kinda popped in my head while I was trying to sleep one night, and I only remembered to try making it a sticker because wrote it in my Notes app. Unsurprisingly, Where It Goes was conceived as I was scooping cat poop. It does not take a genius to come up with ideas like this.
The printer my fiancée got me is called a Canon PIXMA TR4720 Wireless All-In-One Inkjet Printer. It works great, I recommend it. It prints great.
I currently print all my stickers on this Make Market printable sticker vinyl I get at Michaels (here’s a link). It’s great too. I especially like it because it works with the printer I have. It’s also waterproof, which is awesome. I’ve tested putting stickers on a water bottle and washing it, and it does in fact seem waterproof. I have not personally tried running them through the dishwasher, so I like to tell people they’re handwash-only to be safe.
Once they’re printed, I cut them out with a pair of scissors and that’s pretty much it. If business really starts boomin’ I might invest in a Cricut but for now I really don’t mind cutting them out by hand.
Now you know how to make stickers the tbhopps way. Send me a link when you start your own shop and we can be business bros. Or we can take turns lowering our prices and improving the quality of our products until we reach a stabilized point of economic equilibrium. Or whateva.
How I make my stickers
No AI whatsoever
We have a no-tolerance policy for AI-generated artwork here at tbhopps dot com, and the reason is simple. In addition to the countless other ethical issues I have with it, it’s also just not fun to use. If I’m just making stuff for fun over here, which I am, I don’t see the point in passing the best part off to a computer.
You won’t find this kind of integrity everywhere. Not even Hobby Lobby.
Hi, I’m Ted, the guy who was writing in first-person this whole time. ‘Sup!?
I’m a 27-year-old artist based in Indianapolis, where I went to school at IUPUI (right before it became IU Indy) and currently work as a graphic designer at Bradley and Montgomery. When I’m not working or making stickers, I’m probably watching a movie with my fiancée and our cats, Tony Pepperoni and Boba Jo.
By the way, earlier when I was saying things like, “we have a no-tolerance policy” and “our core values,” it’s really just me. I’m just one guy.
Also the “b” in “tbhopps” just stands for my middle name. In case you were wondering. Some people read it as t’bops, which is cool but it’s wrong. It’s T-B-Hopps. Dot com.
Ted “tbhopps” Hopper
This website used to be my portfolio site, not a sticker shop. I am not actively seeking work at the moment, so my professional portfolio is currently private. It also hasn’t been updated in a while, to be honest.
However, if you are an artist interested in collaborating and you’d like to see some design work that’s a little more polished than whatever’s listed in the HoppShopp, feel free to reach out here and I’ll get back to you when I can. Thanks!