Ingredient lists

[BlackDog]

I'm working on wrapping up some bars to give out to family and friends for Christmas. I have a few different recipes going out with different additives, etc. What's the easiest way to get them on a label?

A mail merge? Something else?

 

[DeeAnna]

Why not just type the ingredients list by hand? I'm a geek and know how to do mail merge, but honestly I don't see the benefit of going overly high tech on this, unless you have a large number of different recipes to make labels for all at one time. Is it really going to be time efficient to create a database/spreadsheet, enter the data from your recipe worksheets, create a mail merge document, and tweak the formatting of the results once the mail merge is done to properly fit onto your label?

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Agree - Type it once and then "save as" with a different name and change it. Do this for all of them, and then in each file copy that one label out to fill the page etc.

 

[snappyllama]

I like to save my ingredient list into my Evernote recipe note so I can just copy/paste it into my label. I use MS Publisher for my labels and print a full sheet of labels at once, but I don't label my soaps until I send them out so each sheet might have 3 or 4 different soaps on them. Having the text saved makes it easy to reprint labels for any of my batches.

I also fiddle with my labels all the time so having that design component somewhere else keeps me from having to retype stuff constantly.

 

[Steve85569]

Libre Office also does a nice job of keeping things organized without too much trouble.
So depending on you operating system the possibilities are nearly endless.
Like SL said you can make each label custom for each recipient.

Enjoy!!

 

[BlackDog]

DeeAnna and EG, how do I get my info to fit (match up) on a label sheet when printing without doing a mail merge? The only experience I have doing labels for other non-soap projects is a mail merge, and I only have access to Word and Excel, but not Publisher. I agree, the mm is a pain, so I was hoping to have an easier way.

 

[houseofwool]

I use text boxes in word.

 

[DeeAnna]

Use text boxes, as HoW suggested, and/or use a table in Word. The table cells need to formatted to fit your label stock. If you use Avery labels, you can get templates from Avery for the different types of labels they sell. I think other sellers (Online Labels, etc.) offer templates too. Copy and paste the correct bits into the table, exactly like the example SnappyLlama shared.

Problem is that if you want anything more than the very simplest type of label, Word can be a royal pain in the b**t to use for this work. For anything kind of complicated, it's better to use a graphic design program or a paint-draw type of program (photoshop, gimp, paintshop pro, etc.) for laying out the artwork and text of a single label. Then save the finished label as a jpeg file and paste multiple copies of the jpeg file into Word so you can print them as shown in Snappy's screen shot.

Mail merge is nice for dealing with a lot of information that varies a lot, like when you print out address labels for a mass mailing. But it isn't necessarily much help with graphic design.

I wrote a tutorial about making labels and I know Stacy wrote a more detailed step-by-step procedure here on SMF. I linked to her tut in mine. Maybe you can get some other ideas from these write-ups. See http://classicbells.com/soap/soapyStuff.html

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Indeed - I can't link to it from the app, but Google "gimp label site:soapmakingforum.com" and you'll find it. Gimp is a free tool

 

[BlackDog]

Thanks for the help! It's my goal to use the upcoming long holiday weekend to get these labels knocked out.

Photography is another one of my expensive and time-consuming hobbies, so I have some experience with GIMP and Photoshop, but only with photo editing, not any graphics work.

 

[BlackDog]

PS, DeeAnna, I adore you for having a jingle bells business. I see we share a penchant for the "old world" in addition to geography and underwater hobbies