Making your own fabric labels

When I started thinking about setting up my business and starting to sell my bags and pillows, one of the things I started looking for were labels. Labeling your work will help people recognize your products, making it easy for them to find your shop or website and refer you to their friends.

I wanted something simple and smart looking, with my logo and shop url. I wasn't ready, however, to invest a lot of money and end up stuck with 500 labels. What if I want to change the logo, or the colors?

So I turned to the Internet and found a few tutorials on how to make your own fabric labels!

I ended up using a combination of this tutorial by Allyson Hill and this one by Bonnie from Going Home to Roost:

First I created my logo/label using Photoshop. Then, with Word's Envelopes and Labels, played around with the format, number of rows and columns per sheet. It's important to know how you are going to used them so that you have enough space between them. I wanted to be able to use them individually or double sided.

When I was happy with the format, I hit print. You may want to test it first on paper, to check the size of the labels and make sure the image is sharp enough. I had to go back to Photoshop and adjust my logo a few times until I got it right.

 

Finally, I was ready to print my labels onto fabric, cut them up and following the manufacturer's instructions, apply them to my items. Easy peasy!

For the eco-conscious crafter, check out this blog post from Crafting a Green World. It has some good ideas on how to make your labels greener!

There are tons of tutorials and resources out there so  take your time, have a look and choose the one that works for you.