Printing Custom Labels

Sunday, January 12th, 2020

I want to share something I created last year that saves me time now whenever I finish an art piece.  Back in my 'older days', I used to use my inkjet printer to print labels I fuse to the backs of my pieces.  I designed these labels in a program called Scrapbook Factory Deluxe.  I have my logo and my name already on each label, but I would edit them each time to include the Title of my piece and the Year I completed it.  I could also include any other information required if the piece needed it for a show. 

I printed these labels on 8.5 by 11 inch sheets of printable fabric that you can purchase either online or at a local fabric store.  Since the sheets can be expensive, I would try to fill the sheet with as many labels as I needed at the time.  Even after I discovered Spoonflower for printing my larger art pieces, I continued to use my home printer to print my labels.

Early in the year, my husband decided to replace our inkjet printer with a color laser printer.  The prints from a color laser jet are beautiful and print so much faster.  Since we no longer own an inkjet printer, I thought I would still try to print my labels on the laser printer.  I discovered there is a reason they don't specify laser printers on the fabric sheet packages.  They do print, but not well.  They tend to smear the toner by the time the print gets to the bottom of the page.  At least it was worth a try.

Thinking about how I was going to solve this problem, I realized I could just print labels at Spoonflower the same as I print everything else.  They were having a sale on fat quarters so I filled up a .jpg file the size of a fat quarter with my labels in Photoshop.  I uploaded it to Spoonflower and received a piece of fabric with 35 of my labels which should last me for awhile.  Of course they do not contain any Titles or Dates, but have my logo design and name already on them.  I can just add that on the labels as I finish pieces.  You can see what my fat quarter looks like below.  Next time I will go ahead and order a yard of labels.  It is something to consider if  you find you are always needing to create labels for your art pieces.