How to Design a Sticker or Label for Homemade Food

Jars of preserved vegetables

Making your own preserves, bread, cookies and other food items can be rewarding and economical. To keep your kitchen cupboards and refrigerator organized, label each jar or container of food with the contents and date made. Labels displaying the date the food was made also prevents food waste. You can design homemade food labels using word processing software, and add decoration using the software or by hand.

Things You'll Need

• Printer
• Felt tip markers (optional)
• Scissors
• Clear tape

Instructions

1. Open the word processor and create a new document. View the document as a printable page.

2. Draw a table across the page with the same number of cells as the desired number of labels. For example, if you want eight labels draw a table with two columns and four rows. Adjust the table size to according to how big you'd like each label to be.

3. Type the name of the food and the date it was made in each cell. Align the writing so that it's in the center of the cell. From here you can also change the line spacing, font and color in any way you wish.

4. Add any decorations, such as clip art, to your labels. Alternatively, if you want to decorate the labels with felt tip markers, leave enough blank space to add decorations after printing.

5. Preview the labels to check that they will print as you wish. If everything is correct, print the document.

6. Add decorations by hand using the felt tip markers. This could be borders around the text or other decorations such as flowers, stars or spirals, or draw a picture corresponding to the food inside the container to make it easy to identify quickly when scanning the cupboard or refrigerator.

7. Cut out the labels carefully.

8. Stick the labels to the food containers using the clear tape. Cover the entire label with tape to protect the paper from damage.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have sheets of self-adhesive labels, you can your labels on to these rather than standard paper, then peel each label of the sheet and stick directly on to the jar or container.