For the Love of Labels

Designing my own lip balm labels is almost as satisfying as blending oils to create a new scent. That is, until I decided I wanted to try printing them myself. I ordered the labels I thought I wanted, learned a new design program that came with them and worked away at creating new labels for the new lip balms that were still cooling after being poured into their tubes. Great! I thought, now I can print as many as I want, when I want, and no shipping costs every time I want to have more labels printed...

I inserted the sheet of clear matte blank labels and happily clicked the "print" button.. What at first looked like a beautiful label left a big fat smudge on my finger as I peeled it off the sheet. Maybe it just needed to dry more, I reasoned. I sped up the process with a fan, then a heated fan. Still smudged. I waited a few hours. I peeled another label and wound it around a tube - it looked fingerpainted. I tried the brown kraft paper labels I had bought for tins of lip balm, not tubes. They were smaller, but I was getting deperate. Align: It's a word I've always liked. I wrecked more than 40 labels trying to align these buggers. Two hours and many little balls of paper on the floor later, I stormed out of the room, opened a fresh lip balm, sniffed, applied, smoothed and let out a deep breath.

I did eventually get four of them to print. But they weren't the size I had intended for the tube anyway, and the ink just didn't pop like it would with a white background.

I spent the next three hours designing the labels all over again in another design program - the one I used when I had the labels printed elsewhere - and almost clicked the "ship" button. But I didn't.

The next day I bought full 8.5 x11 inch label sheets, found a 1.5 inch round punch, came home, printed my lip balm label designs, and punched them out myself. No need to "align."

Know that when you buy one of the Nature Inspires Goddess Lip Balms, that it has been made with love, from the moment I carefully pour the hot recipe into their tubes, to the moment I happily stick their labels on. Still, I realize it's not the label that does your lips a favor, its what inside.