The holiday porter has been bottle conditioning for about a month and a half, and just in time for the holidays we got going on the bottle labels so these would be ready for sharing with friends and family. Actually we totally waited until the last minute to finish on this, but it all worked out. Erica and I worked on making a custom label design (read: Erica made an amazing label and I maybe gave two cents of feedback for the win), and then it was up to me to bring it home and get it printed and affixed. I found this to be quite a fun crafty adventure, here is what it took…
1) making the actual design in Photoshop. We made a 4″w x 3.5″h, 300dpi, transparent background file, then made the logo in that.
2) cut out a bunch of brown grocery bags into usable rectangles a bit larger than 8.5 x 11 (carefully avoiding thick or rough sections from the normal bag sections that make it a “bag”. carefully cut these down until they were exact custom 8.5×11 paper sheets.
3) made 4 equal copies of the label in PNG format so it was easy to print out in Windows 7 in the “3.5 x 5 in (4)” setting, with “Fit picture to frame” unchecked. Without any manual settings, this ensured the actual size of the logo was printed four times per each sheet of paper with just enough extra space to avoid compromising the size or borders.
4) once printed, made several careful cuts to trim out the logos with the desired size and borders.
5) once the labels were finished, it was time for the homemade glue to be made! a mix of 3Tbsp water + 1 packet gelatin, then after that is mixed added 6Tbsp whole milk and mixed until dissolved. Thanks to a blog post by Jessica Jones for this idea, it worked quite well (http://howaboutorange.blogspot.com/2012/09/glue-jam-and-beer-labels-to-glass-with.html)
7) Put a sponge on a plate, then soaked the glue into the sponge, then gently pressed each label one at a time to get the whole back moist and affixed to the bottles.
Here are some photos of the finished product:
the handmade labels, printed out and cut to size
The finished product by the campfire on Christmas eve 🙂
bodobeers 