Slapping a sticker on a water bottle or a laptop is not a groundbreaking idea. Nor is sticking a pin onto your jacket or bag.

But as the saying goes, “it’s not the nail, it’s the carpenter.” It’s not always the thing itself, but the way you put it out there.

And as someone who’s always felt the need to stand out from the group and assert my individuality, stickers, pins, and patches have been an easy way to telegraph my me-ness.

They’re inside jokes you can take with you, little winks to the outside world, ways to connect with strangers even if you never exchange verbal hellos.

When I see a sloppy assortment of random brand stickers on someone’s Nalgene, I feel a little sad for that person. Because they could be saying so much more about themselves and they probably don’t realize it.

I grew up in the days of Lisa Frank, scratch-and-sniffs, and Trapper Keepers, so the habit of personalizing and marking my stuff came early and never really left my psyche.

Now most of my travel bags have a few patches sewn on1 and our coolers are slowly gaining a collection of souvenir destination and brewery stickers — I’m especially proud of the one that says My Other Ride is a Pumpkinboat.

They’re not just cute. Stickers and patches claim my stuff visually. Want to take my backpack? I’ll know it’s mine and not yours because it has a Morse’s pickle patch on it. My iPad is the one with a sticker that says Cat Huffer, obviously.

I even stickered my first paddleboard (named Lafayette) with a custom design that read “America’s Favorite Floating Frenchman.”

And each add-on is an expression of the vibe I’m putting out into the universe.

Yes, you can monogram a boat and tote with a clever saying to make it your own. But you can also go one step further with a Bog of Eternal Stench National Park patch. Even if we have the same bag, we won’t have the same bag.

Unless, of course, we want to be twinsies.2

My general rule is that placement matters.

Think carefully about where you’re putting your stickers and patches, not just for visibility but in terms of an overall layout. This is crucial because if you want to add more stickers or patches down the line, you won’t have backed yourself into a corner, space-wise.

And sometimes you have to sit with a piece for a while until it tells you where it wants to go — or what wants to go on it. I have a new Yeti Rambler in shocking neon ‘80s yellow, and it’s staying naked for a while until I know exactly what theme it needs. It might be tarot stickers!

Tips for Stickers

Love that sticker? Buy two! Especially if it comes from an independent artist or shop, because you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to find it again. And you might want a second sticker if you end up needing to replace a water bottle, iPad case, or whatnot.

File your stickers. Grab a three-ring binder and some clear pockets for storing your stickers. Organize by category, color, size — whatever appeals to you.

When in doubt, go waterproof. Even if you’re not planning on dunking whatever you’re stickering in water, sturdy vinyl stickers (that tend to be waterproof) will hold up longer without fading or peeling at the corners.

Tips for Patches

Sew, don’t iron. I know, this takes twice as long and is twice as much work, but it serves two purposes:

1. The patches are far less likely to peel off and become lost to the ages.

2. If you do want to remove a patch at any point and transfer it elsewhere, it’s much easier to snip the threads and get it off that way.

Use a thimble. Yes, a thimble, like the Monopoly piece! It helps you push the needle through tougher fabrics (like, say, boat and totes) without killing your thumbs.

But don’t sew through waterproof fabric. It is really difficult, for one thing, and pokes holes in the water-resistant coating, for another, which means you won’t really want to remove them.

Which brings me to my next point:

What I Don’t Recommend

Doing something like what has now become my epic National Parks art project, the bag we call Big Blue.

I started sewing patches onto this L.L. Bean rolling duffle in 2018 after our Glacier National Park trip.

And now there are so many patches, and I physically bled putting so many of them on, and the whole thing is such an investment of time and money and sentimental value that I’m terrified to use it as checked luggage.

Which defeats the point.

One more tip! Keychains!

It’s also fun to use keychains as zipper pulls on bags. I started doing this in earnest with all the keychains I picked up along Route 66. They’re super functional when you’re looking for zippers on backpacks.

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2

My general rule for Yeti drinkware is one sticker per tumbler, but I broke that rule when I made custom Lover album versions for my LA bestie and me, and I loved them so much that it changed me.