Tutorial Tuesday- create your own logo, and use it to make sew in labels!

You guys probably remember that I just posted a tutorial on how to print on fabric .  I was trying it out myself and figured out a GREAT way to make your own sew in tags for all your sewing projects.  Making tags or labels adds that extra oomph to your projects whether you sell them or just make them for friends.  The first thing you  need to do is go to 

picnik a free photo editing website to create your logo.   You need to start with a blank image you save as a jpeg file.  I have loaded one below so you can save it in your pictures.

It looks blank above but if you right click you can save this blank photo to work with in  picnik

 Then upload the blank image you have saved in your photos into picnik to edit.  Here is the logo I created 

To create this in picnik I opened my blank photo then clicked on the button that says "text" and created the words I wanted in the font and size I wanted.  From there I clicked on the button marked "stickers" and chose a sticker in the color and size I wanted. That gave me the orange deisgn in the background.  I had to click on the design and choose the option to "send to back" to put it behind the words.  Next I added the small black design by choosing the same sticker but I chose to leave it black and put it in front of the background sticker.  Then I saved it to my computer and that was it.  

Now that you have your logo you will want to print it onto fabric to make sew in tags.  So here is a refresher on how to print DIRECTLY onto fabric.

The first thing you have to do is iron your piece freezer paper waxy side down (cut to the exact measurements of a piece of printer paper) to your fabric of choice for your labels.  You can use linen, knit like t shirt material, anything that is of a normal thickness.

Now use your rotary cutter and mat to trim this to match the ironed on wax paper.  Insert this into your printer where you regularly feed paper.

Now get on the computer and select your image in windows photo gallery and choose print.  It will automatically give you the option to print it different sizes on the page.  I choose wallet which has 9 to a page.  Where it says choose number of photos to print choose 9 till it shows 9 to a page.

PAY ATTENTION this next part is critical to avoiding a jam!  When you set up your printer options for printing your labels select TRANSPARENCIES where you select type of paper.  Do not leave it at normal!

Now that your material that is ironed to your freezer paper is loaded into your printer and the correct setting have been selected (see above) you get to print!

You can see it coming out of my printer right on the material!

Just trim them with your rotary cutter and mats so that you get perfectly even cuts.

Peel the backing off the individual labels and they are ready to use!  Now you can sew them onto your products.  In this case I sewed them onto a sling I made for a friend.  If you are not using knit or a non fraying material you will need to use a product called Fray Check on all the edges, or fold the edges under before you sew it down.

That is it!  You how have your very own logo, and labels!  Let me know if you have any questions.  I would love to see what you come up with.  Good luck!