Design Your BottlesAlright, so you've read our welcome intro, you've read about the perks, now its time to get down to business! First off, you must design and prepare your bottles. The materials you will need to complete this step are as follows: - Clear, glass - completely see through - bottles (no duh!). It is important what kind you get, popular are Coca-Cola (glass bottles), Dr. Browns bottles, and Coronita bottles, you can also use a different soda or beer bottle of your choice. NOW THIS IS IMPORTANT: The bottles must have a 'screwable' reusable lid, so that once you take it off, you can put it back on tightly and correctly - twist off lids, but even then you must be able to reattach them. - Also its best if the bottle is not engraved, as this will show through when you put on your label.
- Printable (printed) stickers. This is very important, they have to be 'stickers' that you can print onto, mailing labels will suffice, but if you're at an arts and crafts store, look for either printed or printable stickers.
- Goo Gone. Goo gone is a professional product (chemical based from a spray bottle) that you can purchase to remove the 'goo' after you peel of labels, you can use another sort of 'goo' (glue) remover, including rubbing alcohol.
- Access to running water, such as in a sink.
- Dishwashing soap
- 2 small cloths, one dry for wiping off glue/paper bits, one ready to get wet for when you dry off your bottles.
- A printer (must be color) - of course you'll need a computer too, but you're already on one in order to access this site
Alright, first step is to remove the label from the bottle. Do your best to peel off the paper and glue (or plastic and glue - depending on your label) After that use Goo Gone, or your 'goo-removing' product, that way you can get off all the excess 'goo' Use one of your small cloths to scrub off any excess label bits The next step is to be sanitary by cleaning your bottle. Use dishwashing soap to clean your bottle, inside and out, make sure its nice and clean, its also a good time to ensure that you have gotten off all the bits of label left behind. Then dry off your bottle completely, you may need to let it drip-dry for a bit to fully dry the inside, wipe off the outside so there is no water left. Now that we've gotten all the label bits off, and throughly cleaned and dried our bottle we can progress to actually designing our label and applying it to our bottle. First off, you can take two routes. Either design and create your own label in Photoshop or another photo editing software, or be sane (like the rest of us) and use one already created (since they should look all the same in the end anyways).
Now I know what you're thinking.... what the hell am I supposed to do with all this crap? Well you could either just save these images and print them just like that. Or you can download the 'image pack'. The image pack is uploaded (by myself) to MediaFire (popup and survey free). Its been saved in a .zip and a .rar format, meaning you'll either need WinZip or WinRar to open it (don't worry, inside its all the same) - those programs are paid but you can get free trials (just google it). Inside the image pack are all the images you see above, for your access, all the images will be high quality and high resolution, we made 'em perfect... just for you! .zip format http://www.mediafire.com/?b79n4k2756u1kud .rar format http://www.mediafire.com/?2z8w0fe6nh2ka0l Ok, I guess you're probably still thinking 'what the hell am I supposed to do with all this crap?' That's understandable. By now you should have selected the one you like best and downloaded it, or just downloaded the image pack (the easy way). The smaller set is perfect for the top of the bottles- however the larger set must be zoomed in to the preferred size - I zoomed it in to 165% for the best looking fit. ( This may not be true to your printer... everyone’s is different, test it out first) Be Careful! Test out printing the labels beforehand so you know where to shift the labels to, that way you don’t waste sticker paper! Remember – everyone’s printers are different so just get the labels in the right spot and you should be good to go. Alright, I assume you get the picture. Nobody's printer and computer (and even downloader) functions exactly the same, and when you download them, they may not be the perfect size. This means you'll have to *resize* the images. Don't make you're first print on the sticker paper. Do it on regular print, line it up, figure out where you'll put it, and adjust the size to fit your needs. Once you've made sure everything fits perfect, print it out on the sticker paper. *If you are resizing images: Sure you could even do this in Microsoft Word, but that's lame. We recommend a professional grade photo editor like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop. Don't be lame and use the free 'comes-with-your-computer' applications like Paint or even one of the Microsoft Office Programs - even though these work, you won't get as good of quality (but sometimes you have to make do with what you have, right?). So, you've printed out your new *perfectly sized* *absolutely correct* pictures that are the type that *you want*, right? Well, once you've done that, and its printed on the sticker paper, you're ready to add them on to your bottle. You would usually want the label to be situated right-side up and centered, but if you don’t want to, then don’t! They’re your bottles! I'm actually being very lenient, here's the brutal honesty: unless your labels are right-side up and centered, your final work will look like a piece of crap. Big. Stinky. Crap.
*** Note: This sticker is applied to the 'top' of the bottle - basically the lid/cap that makes up the bottle covering Step 2: Test and line them up, if need be, you may want to apply sharpie to the top of the cap/lid before adding it on, in the event the cap sticker doesn't cover it all the way, that way you don't have crap dangling out the side of your sticker. Step 3: Peel back your sticker, get ready to stick. Step 5: Apply the sticker to the cap. Next, apply the front sticker: *** Note: This sticker is applied to the 'front of the bottle' - basically the glass sides that form the actual bottle Step 2: Test and line them up, no sharpie though! This is where the 'center and right-side up' concept comes into play. You're going to want to face the sticker the same direction your cap-sticker is facing as well as centering and making sure its right-side up. Step 4: Line it up carefully - perfectly. No second chances. Make sure you are remembering everything you worked out in Step 2. Step 5: Apply the sticker to the side/front of the bottle. Congratulations! You've completed the designing your bottle step, now move on to the next page, the 'creating your solution' page. |
|
