Personalized Labels

Since I’ve had my embroidering machine almost 2 years, I think it’s about time I make some personalized labels to put on the items I make!
I got pinspired:

I had a couple of ideas of how I wanted to make my labels. I don’t have a logo or anything, so I set out to create something unique. I played with some fonts and graphics and here’s what I came up with:

I did this on a Mac and I looked for tutorial after tutorial on how to create a “mirror” image of the document. Nothing worked. I printed it out on paper, and scanned it in to my PC. I pulled the image into Powerpoint and began working.

The first way I tried to mirror it came out totally wrong (the upside down thing isn’t so bad- the gray background- horrible):

So I found another way:
It mirrored it perfectly, I printed a test page, and then printed the real thing onto iron on transfer paper…

And this was the last page my printer will ever print… I neglected to tell the printer that it was special transfer paper. So I think I messed up something. It’s telling me to check the color cartridge, and I have and it won’t fix. Note to self next time- tell the printer what kind of paper it’s printing on! Oh well- it is 6 years old. By the time we buy a new cartridge to test it, we might as well just buy a new printer. It's only like a $20 difference.

I cut out the squares:

and ironed it onto my 3 test surfaces. The directions said to have a sturdy working surface and discouraged using an ironing board- to the counter it was (protected with a pillowcase of course).

One (ironed onto a ribbon to make a tag- kind of like the inspiration. I did protect the delicate ribbon with another pillowcase while I ironed on the transfer):

Two (ironed directly on the shirt- on the inside of course. My OCD husband has since said it needs to go under the main tag. He said it looks asymmetrical and weird there.)

Three (ironed on a piece of fabric and then sewn onto whatever I’m working on- doing it this way would cause the fabric to fray which could look cool):

I think this was my favorite outcome (I heat-sealed the ribbon edges to prevent fraying). I think I like this the best because it looks like it came that way!