How to make water bottle labels

I am so darn excited that I figured out a easy and inexpensive method of making water bottle labels!  We did water bottle labels when my daughter got married almost 3 years ago and it was a pain.  I wish I would of thought of this back then, it would of saved so much time and money.  {The actual bottles have now changed to a smaller label, since I did these}.

Oh well, now I get to pass my easy idea to all of you and take comfort in the fact that I will be saving other people time and money.

It all started when I thought of making water bottle labels for a charity event my daughter and her friend were hosting.  But I wanted to try printing the labels on regular contact paper.  Contact paper has a self stick backing, plus it is vinyl so the label won’t disintegrate if it gets wet.  Having a laser printer, I knew it would melt the ink on the contact paper unlike an inkjet printer.  And you know what?  It worked perfectly!  The cool thing is, you can buy a roll of contact paper for less than $5, and that will cover a lot of water bottles.  Can’t get any more frugal than that.

So I have put together a little tutorial on how I did it. You do need to either have a laser printer or access to one to be able to make these.   You can check with Kinkos, I think they have laser printers.

I suggest to do a test run on regular paper before you print them on the contact paper.  That way you can see how it would look on the water bottle and make any adjustments.

• Using a word program or Power Point, {I used Power Point because it has a ruler on the side which makes it easier} Place horizontal lines in 1″ increments, you should have 9 total.  This will also serve as your cutting line.
• Type your wording in your favorite font and color that you want to appear on your bottle wrapper in these 1″ x 8″ areas
• Print and cut your labels on regular paper to see if you might need to adjust your layout

This is how your layout should look on your screen {minus the red measurements}.  Make sure you have your page set up to Portrait.

Once you have your layout the way you want it, cut out a piece of 8 1/2″ by 11″ piece of contact paper.  I used white contact paper, but you could really get cre8tive and use a colored paper using contrasting color fonts, add pictures or graphics, I think the possibilities are endless.  You have to manually feed the contact paper into the machine one at a time.  It took me a couple of attempts to get the machine to catch the contact paper, but once I got the swing of it, it went really smooth

Trim your printed contact paper to 8″ wide, then cut the contact paper along the horizontal lines.  {note the first and last strips will be slightly wider than 1″ so you will have to slightly trim these two pieces}

Take off the existing label on your water bottle.  You might have some left over sticky paper that won’t come off, but that is ok.  The new label will hide it.

Peel off the backing on the contact paper of your cut label {for this part of the tutorial I used an empty bottle…I was thirsty}

Adhere the new label to the water bottle, starting at the sticky part left on the bottle.  Wrap around the whole bottle until you meet the start of the label, over lapping the edges.

And your done!

If your water label isn’t the same size as the one I used {Costco brand}  just adjust the 1″ portion on the layout larger or smaller to fit your particular label.

I can not wait to make more.  My sister already requested graduation ones for my nephew’s party.  I want to try blue or red contact paper for the 4th of July.  These would be easy to do for baby and bridal showers, and of course weddings.  I hope you guys get to try this method out, and if you do I would love to see them!

Linking up to the Celebrations at Home link party {I love this blog for party inspiration!}