Pinterest Fail or Holy Grail? - DIY Tape Labels

Pinterest has been my go-to every since I stumbled upon it years ago and my life changed forever. Want to make a no-sew purse? Pinterest. Personalized Decor? Pinterest. How to make yourself slowly go mad trying a DIY? PINTEREST! No but seriously, it's the truth. Have you seen the pinterest fails out there? Goodness gracious..

Well I had been seeing this tutorial on how to make your own stick on labels with clear packing tape, a printer with your design, and some patience. Let's have at er shall we? 😊 

First off you will need some supplies. Which is simple since 95% of us have these lying around the house, amiright?! You will need:
✦ Scissors
✦ Printer Paper
✦ Your lettering design - I used KG Manhattan Script on my word program
✦ A Printer and
✦ A bowl of warm water  

LET'S GET TO IT!

 These are what my pantry labels look like for the time being. Basically got a packet of white sticky labels from the dollar store and went to town. My jars are also from the dollar store, about $2.00 for the smaller sizes and $4.00 for the larger sizes. I Soaked the label in warm water for about a minute then using a razor blade scraped off as much of the label and then scrubbed of the rest with a scrubby. Voila, clean surface. I then wiped the surface where I wanted to put the label with rubbing alcohol to make sure there was no leftover residue. 

I printed off my wording onto a piece of scrap paper cause believe it or not I had NO plain paper ANYWHERE. Then you will want to lay the packing tape over what you printed off. Using a hard surface (such as a Popsicle stick) make sure to press the tape firmly onto writing to make sure it sticks to the tape. 

You can see where I had been rubbing the tape compared to where I didn't. It's great because then you can double check to make sure you had rubbed everything down properly. 

You want to soak the paper in a bowl of Luke-warm water for about 1-3 minutes. I found the longer I left it in the easier the paper peeled off on the back, but really the 2 minute mark was the sweet spot! Then lay your labels sticky side up to dry for about 5 minutes. 

OKAY so now to get down to the details. It really did work! BUT.. it'd wasn't as legible as I was hoping for. So of course I did some more research. Another lady tried this and had the same outcome. This type of tutorial is good for those of us who own a LASER printer and not a INK JET since the ink will most likely run when left in the water too long (oops) She suggest you fill in your lettering with a permanent marker and try again. Which is the right side outcome. I am still not thrilled with the end result, and some of paper wouldn't come off unless scraped off which in turn scraped off the lettering on the tape so all in all I think this is a FAIL! BUT if you do own a laser printer and want to try this out for yourself, please let me know in the comments below if it's a fail or holy grail! :D

I will probably try and redo my labels but instead using a tape/label method, I will use my Sharpie paint markers (which are the best inventions since white glue had a rubber tip) and will make an update post!