because you've got too much free time on your hands

 

 

Recently I stumbled across this cool blog and its out-of-this-world mother-list of artist gift tags and labels you can link to directly here. Most of them are holiday themed and not particularly what I would use in my art journal, but there were some--oh, blessed some!--that were perfect for journaling! I literally spent the next few hours going through the list, downloading the tags/labels I liked, and then bunny hopping to each site linked to discovering that most of the sites had even more downloadable pretties to feast upon!! And what a feast it was!!! I was literally chasing after and downloading tags for hours! I found so many amazing ones that I'd probably never need to buy another label again--but then where's the fun in that??

 

 

 

However, I feel it is my duty to warn you now: carve out a significant portion of your day before clicking on the link above or your job, family, and responsibilities will suffer when you are glued to the computer for the next 5 hours--I'm not exaggerating.

 

Here are a couple of tips I discovered:

 

-Visit each site after downloading the tags/labels you like and search the sidebars for "downloadables", "freebies", "printables" and the like. And beware: you are likely to link to many more sites before you find your way back to where you began. This is the fun part.

-Use your best quality paper and printer settings to print these babies. I have a great Epson printer and with the right paper, the quality is just as good as a color copy made from a printer service. It eats me alive in ink but is well worth the money on occasions like this.

-Many of the tags have "to, from" written on them which can be easily erased by opening the pdf file (or jpg) in an image editing software (like Photoshop) instead of Adobe Reader. Download the file then open it by right clicking on the icon and 'Open With' then choose your imaging program. Once it's up, choose your erasing tool or a paintbrush the same color as the background and remove the writing you don't want to make a generic label for journaling. Make sure you save the new file to print again later!

-If you don't have all day and need a quick fix, here are some favorites I discovered:

 

The Container Store - several choices of labels in various sizes. I fell in love with the "colored frame" labels and downloaded them in every size.

 

Style Guide | Downloads - printable goodies to use as wedding/party favors but there are tons of great things to use in your journaling with a little creativity. I'm seriously searching all the wedding sites after this.

 

Just Something I Made - This site alone will occupy you for hours. Look in the left side bar for the "FREE digital downloads" link. She's got an insane number of downloadable goodies to share and lots of great ideas for using them. Well worth wading through!

Comments

[kelly]

I LOVE you for this. Thank you for making my day!!! I will have a link about it on my blog tomorrow. *MWAH*

[Paula Bogdan]

Oh, WOW! Thank you! I'm going to link to you in my blog and share the wealth. I know what I'm going to be doing this weekend!

[Cindy (Junque Art)]

Thanks so much for the label links. I have been printing and printing!!

[Mary]

Thank you so much....!!!

[Cathe Holden]

Look at all of those images you printed off with my freebies, how cool is THAT?!! I see some other's mixed with them, what fun resources you're sharing. Thanks for linking to mine, I just posted more today!!

Cathe Holden
JustSomethingIMade.com

[Francie]

How fun to be hopping along catching up on some favorite blogs and bam!
a compliment! :) I gathered them up for the holidays so they could definitely use some updating with more everyday labels. I have a folder full bookmarked but I've been a little busy lately. Hopefully I'll get those up soon. In the meantime, thanks and enjoy!

Francie

[iHanna]

I love this list too, there is so much fun to print there. I'm going back to it again now, thanks for the great printing advice too. Happy journaling!

[Darlene]

Yeah. So...I got sucked into the label black hole the other night for about 4 HOURS! LOL THanks a lot woman. :-)

[jessica loughrey]

debra, thank you so much for sharing this! i've been back here several times for the links and am busily printing and printing and printing....

thanks!

[Tanya]

these are awesome! thanks for sharing. now i will have MORE stuff to add to my remains journal. I cant stop- i may be addicted! I found some cool vintage labels to download as well. you can find the link on my blog here http://scrapbits.typepad.com/scrap_bits/2010/01/free-downlaodable-vintage-labels-.html