Leave Your Mark: How to Print Labels for Products and Packaging

Leave Your Mark: How to Print Labels for Products and Packaging

With products and packaging, the label says it all. From shape and size to color and content, custom product labels do more than sell – they tell your brand story. Whether you want to print product labels for wine and beer bottles, handmade soaps and candles, baking mixes or jams in mason jars, label printing with Smartpress gives you options to capitalize on opportunity.

Four rolls of product labels with custom designs and in different shapes unrolling.

 

Roll Labels

A popular choice for products of all kinds is custom roll labels. Durable and moisture-resistant, roll labels feature BOPP plastic and permanent adhesive to keep your branding and messaging vibrant (and effective) at all times. 

 

No matter where you display your products, roll label printing with Smartpress keeps them in the spotlight. How exactly? With gloss and matte coating options that suit your sell. Have luxe makeup products that need serious shine? Go with gloss. Creating a vintage vibe with handmade jewelry? Stick with matte.

On a roll with a 3” diameter core, roll labels are available in four different shapes and standard sizes. And while they can be interchangeable, some product packaging just looks better with a specific shape. We suggest:

 

  • Circle Roll Labels: Mason jar labels for jam, honey, pickles… basically anything with a lid!
  • Rectangle Roll Labels: For homemade candles and wine, beer and water bottles.
  • Square Roll Labels: For coffee bags, nutrition labels and ingredients, lip balms and other beauty packaging. 
  • Oval Roll Labels: For handmade soaps and lotions that call for a more refined, unique look.

 

 

A hand peeling an oval-shaped product label off its backing, printed with Farmington Road Fresh.

It was that unique look that drew Jennifer Byrnes, owner of Farmington Road Fresh, to the oval shape. “[They’re] for our egg cartons. We want our cartons to look as colorful as our eggs, which are green, blue, orange and brown,” she said.

 

Noting the ease of which roll labels can be stored, Byrnes finished her labels (and their cheeky slogan) with a gloss laminate that “looks so professional and expensive.”

 

Hint: Be sure to know the unwind or rewind direction if your labels are being applied by a machine. This refers to the orientation of the labels on the liner.

A hand peeling a label off a sheet of labels printed with Home and Currant, Brown Sugar and Fig.

LABELS: CRACK ‘N’ PEEL, KISS CUT SHEETS, 4 X .75″

Two hands peeling a teal popcorn label off of its white crack n peel backing stock.

LABEL: CRACK ‘N’ PEEL, 2.75 X 7″

Sheet Labels

As a customer-focused online printer, Smartpress makes it possible to create and print packaging Labels on traditional sheets, too. Simple to store in a stack just about anywhere, these labels can be designed with custom dimensions – no shape or size is off limits!

 

And speaking of shapes, with digital laser cutting, you can print your own labels in nearly any shape you can think of. Whether you need hundreds of labels in the same shape or want to vary your label design across products, we make it easy with these laser cutting options:

  • Die Cut Single: This cut is a single label cut on the dieline.
  • Kiss Cut Single: A single label cut on the dieline with an additional die cut about 1/4” around to allow for easier removal from the label liner.
  • Kiss Cut Sheet: This cut gives you multiple labels per sheet with one cutting design.
  • Combo Sheet: This cut results in multiple designs with a kiss cut on one sheet.

Hint: Die… what? A dieline is basically a template of your label that shows where your design will be cut.

 

 

Custom product labels peeling off a backing sheet with a stack of three candles behind them.

 

 

Customize and print product labels even more with variable data printing (think barcodes, QR codes, product names, etc.), classic rounded corners and even shrink wrapping to organize and protect your labels until you need them.

 

For Jennifer Schmidt, co-owner of Radiant Candle Co. with Rachel Kooistra, it was all about efficiency for their modern, minimalist packaging: “We love that the sheet labels make the labeling process so quick! The labels peel off easily and storage is a breeze.” 

 

 

A woman in a white shirt and black cardigan holding a burning candle in a jar with a custom printed label.

IMAGE COURTESY OF RADIANT CANDLE CO.

Two hands applying a custom printed label printed with Home to a candle in a dark jar.

LABEL: CRACK ‘N’ PEEL, DIE CUT SINGLE, 3.5 X 2″

Accommodating Adhesives

As you design, there’s one important question to keep in mind before you print product labels: Do you use permanent labels or removable labels? Well, if you need to reposition or remove labels altogether, go with a removable stock. If you want to apply your labels once and keep them there for good, choose a permanent stock.

 

While roll labels are available on permanent stock only, our sheet labels are a bit more flexible. With those, you’ll find permanent, removable and the fan-favorite crack ‘n’ peel stock, which features a liner that’s scored for you to easily crack and peel off.

Schmidt, who used crack ‘n’ peel for her candles, found our adhesion to be the answer to her previous label woes.

 

“We adhere our labels to both glass and metal. Compared to the many other labels we tested, Smartpress delivered the highest print quality and consistent product,” she said. “We struggled with other labels bubbling on glass jars, but that has never been a problem since switching to Smartpress!”

 

Hint: Want to learn more about label stocks? Check out our Label Printing FAQ.

Five custom product labels printed in red, orange, yellow, blue and pink with a hand peeling the orange one.

Four candles in gold tins with custom packaging labels on them in white with black cursive writing.

Multiple Labels, One Order

Whether you’re a small business owner with a handful of products or a corporation with hundreds, chances are you need more than one label design. That’s where online printing with Smartpress really pays off. With our Versions feature, you can print multiple custom labels with different content in the same order. (Note: Versions is available on sheet labels only, not roll labels.)

 

Just think of how many different types of one product you can have. Different scents, different flavors, different colors. And how tedious and expensive it would be to print each design separately. 

Versions takes that process and simplifies it (while keeping you on-budget, too). As long as your labels are the same size, on the same stock and have the same finish, you can change the content and artwork all you like.

 

Used on her candle labels, Schmidt can attest to the convenience of Versions. “[It] has allowed us to order in bulk easily, while ensuring a consistent product for different labels,” she said. “We don’t have to worry about re-entering dimensions or other settings multiple times – they’re all attached to the same item. It really makes ordering a breeze.”

 

 

 

Two hands peeling a permanent label from its backing, printed with Coconut Flurry in blue and Mixed Up Nut Butter in yellow.

LABEL: WHITE POLYPROPYLENE – PERMANENT, 5 X 1.7″

 

 

Kent Arnold, co-founder and vice president of product development and manufacturing at Mixed Up Nut Butter, felt the economic ease of Versions, too.

 

“I like how I can get bulk discounts, given the label shape, size and material are all the same,” he said. “This is beneficial as we have four different SKUs, so we can keep our costs down as much as we can.”

 

Hint: Not sure what to put on your personalized labels? Experiment and print product labels with this common content:

  • Product title
  • Brief product description
  • Company branding (logo, slogan, etc.)
  • Ingredients or nutritional information
  • Barcodes 
Two hands peeling a supplement label off its crack n peel backing stock, printed with Woman Well in purple.

LABEL: CRACK ‘N’ PEEL, 5.5 X 2″

A collage of various custom labels to personalize packaging like candle jars, gourmet popcorn and other retail items.

Service That Sticks

No matter your level of design experience, Smartpress’ online printing services make creating labels for your business seamless. From concept to final product, the collaboration continues through it all.

 

Caitlin Pace, sales, marketing and materials manager for Minnesota Women’s Care, was most impressed with “how vivid the colors were and how crisp even the smallest details printed” on her dietary supplement labels. “The sheet label format is great, it is easy to use and straight to the point. The labels went on with ease.” 

For Arnold, proficient processes made an impact. “Reordering is easy, PDF proofs are quick, and there are humans behind each label review, so mistakes are caught!”

 

Ultimately, it’s personalized service from start to finish.

 

“There are so many reasons we’ve loved working with Smartpress,” said Schmidt. “The labels are affordable, print quality is amazing and the customer service is above and beyond! Any time we’ve run into a question or needed a quick turnaround, the team has replied promptly and gone above and beyond to get us what’s needed.”

 

Hint: Dive even deeper into product label printing and branding here: Custom Branding: Printing Labels, Stickers & Decals for Products & Packaging.

 

 

 

FEATURED DESIGNS

Circle Roll Label Designed by Jennifer Schmidt
Square Roll Label Designed by Matt Johnston, Stoble Coffee
Rectangle Roll Label Designed by Cecelia Fleishman
Oval Roll Label Designed by Jennifer Byrnes, Farmington Road Fresh
Radiant Candle Co. Labels Designed by Jennifer Schmidt
Scott’s Orchard Popcorn Labels Designed by Rachel Schoenholz
Mixed Up Nut Butter Label Designed by Mixed Up Nut Butter
Woman Well Label Designed by BJ Alexander of Minnesota Women’s Care

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