I Love CUSTOM!

Now that the holidays are over I want to share one of my favorite tricks for adding that personal yet professional touch to your gifts.        Custom Labels!

This year I made several gifts from my kitchen.  One thing was homemade Irish Creme.  I wanted to reuse some Starbucks bottles I had, love that vintage milk bottle shape.  By the way if you are having issues getting the sticky off, use goo gone and scrub, scrub, scrub, then run them through your dishwasher to get the residue off and you have wonderful bottles to reuse!  Remember the lids won't be able to be resealed so you will need to let your person know that item needs to be refrigerated if it is something perishable.  Back to the labels...

I wanted simple & adorable labels so I went to my favorite supplier, OnlineLabels.com.  I have used them for many, many labels over the years.  For my business, employer and for personal projects.  I love, love, love that you can download a pdf template, import it into publisher and use that as a "frame" to build your label in.  They also have software called "maestro" I believe but Publisher and I are great friends so I stick with them.  I have designed water bottle labels for conventions, food labels, business cards, gift labels...even custom newsletter tabs!  I love that they have a HUGE variety of materials: color, metallic, clear and a variety of textures, glossy, matte and cardstock.  All the labels come in a custom clamshell that you can open and close easily to store your extra labels in or reuse after the project has completed.  I have to say that my absolute favorite labels are those in the clear and glossy variety.  Their adhesive is fantastic and works wonderfully.  They have a huge variety of templates and shapes and that is inspiring in itself.  I am also a comparison price shopper and I have not found anyone that touches them for pricing.

I hope you will try them out next time you need to make some custom labels for products, they have mailing labels all the way through custom water and wine bottles.  Heck they even have cigar labels!  Amazing and so great for that DIY bride or home designer.  Have fun!

They are having a contest right now too...check out this link to win an ipad Mini!
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/82b6c76/  

Organizing in January!

Traditionally in January we have cleaning & purging projects...so far my teenage children have cleaned and purged their clothes and outdated toys & decor and we have donated those prior to the end of the year (got to love tax breaks). 

Now I plan on cleaning the basement and organizing that as well as building some storage shelves in our closets and organizing that chaos!  I created a board on pinterst for clever closet storage, plus great pantry projects, my pantry isn't too bad but I do think pantry & closet projects go together. Now  I am not one who needs my jar & can labels to be organized perfectly but I do like things to fit well on shelves and maximize space. 

I often buy in bulk and decant to large gallon jars and I also repurpose cute jelly jars for spices and custom spice blends in our cabinet as well.  One of my favorite finds are half gallon jars that use the same lid and have the same circumference but are just half the height of regular ones.  So charming and perfect for rice & beans.  I like to blend the vintage charm of our 1915 kitchen with restaurant style kitchens, lots of stainless and bulk storage on easy display, it compliments each other nicely.

 

I am hoping in the new year to have my most successful garden yet as well, have some fun ideas in mind as shown here,  hoping to tile our cracking front steps and do some repainting of trim and the kitchen and bathroom.  Thankfully the painting projects are just to brighten not change the color so those will go fast! 

So here is to late winter projects and the promise of spring!