Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Spice Jar Labels

It's been a while and we've had a lot going on here. I wanted to share with you some labels I made for the lil spice jars. Hubby surprised me one day by bringing home a cute lil spice cabinet WITH the lil spice jars included....



















And here's another pic of it....















As you can see it has all the lil spice jars. The top shelf piece had been taken off, painted and a decal applied. But when I do a make-over on it I'll remove all that, plus I'll be taking the lattice door panels out and replacing it with screen/wire. I think that will make it look a lot more prim. And the one thing I love most about this piece is that it has the cute lil drawer at the bottom. I've yet to start to work on the cabinet make-over but I did manage to get the vintage labels made for the jars, and that is what I'll be sharing with you.

First, here are the labeled jars and then I'll tell how I made them.....














If you like and want to make my labels, get the 2 sheets of label graphics from my share Box in the right side menu. These are in .png file format (no background), and are named spices1 and spices2.

You'll need:
coffee stain (for paper)
plain copy paper (of course)
brown shoe polish in the tins - wax type
cosmetic sponge or rag to apply shoe polish
white glue and old artist brush

I used plain copy paper that I coffee stained to print my labels out on. So if you don't already have some stained paper then get those done and print the sheets out. Next, grab that faithful ole shoe polish, lol! Don't we just love using that on everything! I get the tins of the brown and black at my local Family Dollar. I used a cosmetic sponge but you can use a piece of an old rag or what ever you wish to apply the shoe polish to the label sheets.
First, dab a little polish on your sponge and gently blot it on the labels randomly. Don't worry if you get a really dark spot, just wipe it across the label/paper to spread it out. Be sure to blot this all around the labels so you won't have any "light" spots on your sheets. Here is what mine looks like after doing one sheet. Left is polished, right side sheet isn't.....















I love the vintage look the shoe polish give the labels! Be careful not to get the shoe polish on the back side of the sheets. Once you have the labels as you like them, start cutting them out. I cut mine really close to the designed border on the labels as these were especially made a certain size to fit the jars. And here's a pic of mine cut out laying on white paper so you can see the details of the polish....















Grab your white glue and start painting the glue on the back side of a label. Place it on the spice jar as desired and let sit to dry. Do one label/jar at a time and keep your labels level with each other as you put them on the jars. Simply put the jars side by side to keep the labels even.

This same technique is also used on vintage looking pantry jars and such. And of course it looks fantastic on your prim tags! Hope you have fun with these and feel free to change the spice names if needed.
And....if you already have labels on your spice jars but want to make them more prim looking, use the shoe polish technique on them. No need to make new labels if they're already on the jars, right? So just prim them up a little.
I know we've talked about the shoe polish before, but for those who have missed that, give the shoe polish a try on some of the items you craft. Another wonderful thing to use it on are the paper mache boxes we love to paint and. The shoe polish gives them a wonderful aged look (I've posted pics on those before).

I'll try to catch things up on my blog and show you more things I've been crafting. Plus I'll post pics of the spice cabinet once I have it finished so you can see the complete make-over. I do hope you have had fun with your crafts and having a great year with your shows! Also want to wish everyone a very safe and Happy 4th of July! Till next time, have fun crafting!
Warm prim hugs, Libs

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