DIY Pantry Labels on a Cricut Joy, Maker, or Explore!

hi everyone my name is jennifer

maker

today i show you how to properly design and cut

pantry

labels

with a

cricut

cutting machine in the great

maker

program and tell you that i recently renovated my kitchen with beautiful glass front cabinets and really i want to put some canisters in jars in there but the thing is i need to label them because otherwise the ingredients are too hard to tell i've been using my brother pete uh CH labeler but those

labels

aren't very pretty or really not big enough to reach from a distance so I'm going to use my Cricut to create my own custom

pantry

labels that look great and are easy to read and I'm going to show you how to do it too so for this project you want a full sheet? label paper like this or the

cricut

smart label writable vinyl on a roll now i prefer the smart vinyl smart label for the look and feel and i think it looks i think it also sticks better to surfaces also needs some jars and jars to label i'm using the Aq sa pop as well as mason jars in various sizes now, if using mason jars look for ones with smooth sides as your labels will stick to them much better than those with the embossed designs you know from the ones I'm talking about now.

I am going to use my Cricut cutting machines to cut and straighten my pantry labels. You can make them on any Cricut, but in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make them on a Cricut joy and a Cricut maker but in a browser. The advantage of using the Cricut joy would also be that you can use the smart label material without a mat and it's easier to take the Cricut right into the kitchen while you label all your things and you don't have to keep making trips. back and forth, oh, and you need a pen for your labels, too.

I am using a fine point black Cricut pen that has a four millimeter point. The size of the pen tip is important if you use my designs, your Cricut can correct and decorate your pantry. labels with the pen right in the machine and ok fab it goes right here now last but not least you need to design your pantry labels it can be simple or fancy its completely up to you i will show you how to make Three different styles, a super easy simple label to a big bold easy to read label like this one and a fancy writing label that is totally on trend.

I'll even show you my personal tricks on getting the cricket pen to shoot thoughts for bolder and more beautiful labels, so let me start by showing you how to design pantry labels to suit your style and decor step 1 design your pantry labels here we are in cricut design space which is the design software you'll use for your cricut joy cricut

explore

or a cricut maker click new project here on the left i'm going to show you how to make three different styles of pantry labels. The first will be simple, the second is bold, and the third is elegant.

Let's start with a simple one for each pantry label we make. We need two basic things: a shape. for the label and the writing itself the label that we put on it to begin with let's get a shape click on the shapes here on the left and you can click on a circle for example and there we have a shape which is pretty easy now let's make it white just because most of our labels are really white and it just helps us visualize it so we go up to this box here while the circle is selected and click on the white square so now we have a box now it's important make your label the correct size. for your container for example I know a two inch circle is the correct size for my container so to change the size we go to the top here under the size and select the numbers and change it from whatever to whatever that we want it to be so I'm going to type 2 and hit enter and it will resize for me and I'm going to use these buttons down here to make this a little bit bigger so we can see what we're doing just the don't see the actual circle, so here we have a circle which is cool but we need to g put a label on it right?

So the easiest way to do this is to click on the text here on the left and a box pops up that says add text here and we're going to type in a name for our first ingredient. so flour so it's too big so we're going to use this resize handle here and click and drag it until it's like a sleeve the right size and click and drag it into position now very important we need to tell you to the cricut we want to use the pen to write this label on our pantry label we need to change it from cut which is the default to draw so everything is cut by default and that's important to understand every time you want to draw something you need to change it to draw then with the word selected go to the line type menu here at the top and choose draw like this ok now this is how it will be written on your label maybe think this is awesome and if it does then you are almost good to go all you have to do is select both your shape and your word both put them so you can see they are both selected Add here and then click attach if you don't do this the word won't actually show up on your tag ok so if this is all you want and you love this then this is it you're good to go just make sure you renamed your label to draw your shape is cut out and you have them attached and you can see them here attached ok but what if you want to change the shape? what this font looks like if you don't like this bubble letter effect a lot of people don't want it to look like it's written with a pen you could have made it look nice and not some weird outline you can do this and you use a script font to do this so first let's separate everything so we can get there our larum our word here so now I've selected our name and I'm going to go up and we're going to choose a different font so I'm going to go to the font menu right now it's crickets and generally the default is that and here under filter on the right hand side I'm going to select writing and this will show me only the fonts that have a writing style which means it will just a single line or something similar to what you actually seem to write and if you don't have access to cricut many of them will cost extra but there is one and I think it's actually cricut sans it's just the writing version so if has access or to anything with a media that is included in the cricut access ok so what we need to access the script font is you go to style at the top of the screen and choose write so if you don't you choose to write you won't get the writing font and there we go you'll see how different it looks very different so let's make sure everything is aligned so I selected both the label shape and the word to go to the alignment menu and I'm going to click Center and that will align my two toppings my circle and then I'm going to attach it again make sure it has a you drawing and a cut layer and this my friends is a simple pantry label you can do these in any of the script fonts any of the fonts you can choose whatever you want and you can go crazy and do it for everything so let's just put this one aside and move on to the next label I'm going to put this here just so it doesn't get in the way it's ok then is our next tag is a bold font this font is not particularly bold and if you have a pantry like me. that's not well lit it's pretty small it's hard to see a dainty platter like this in your pantry and you don't want to be grabbing the flower when you really wanted the cornmeal that's not going to taste very good so here's one way to make a bolder font and let me show you how to do it so again we'll make a shape and this time I'll just pick a square and if you don't like having boring shapes like this there are alternatives if you want to images and click cartridges there are several cartridges here labels with the flour ish line labels with decorative lines lining simple lines oblique lines all these filled with label shapes and correct style so many labels here so we can choose this one and I have these labels are part of Cricut access and just so that everyone know it's called plain labels ok i'm going to choose this one we'll use this one instead so go ahead and delete this square so i know it's for my jars not my cont forks my largest containers I want them to be about 4 inches and it's also important to know that Cricut joy as the max size if you're going to use label paper is four and a quarter inches I think it's about a quarter inch so let's make this four inches wide so I'm just selecting the size up there at the top and changing it to four so there we go four inches nice big tag doesn't matter what color it's just you can see it ok so now we need a font and i mean a bold font so i'm going to click on the text and i'm going to work well my name gradient we're going to use to say one so we can compare it's nice and easy, so here's the word flower it's not bold but there are options and I'm going to use a font that I've downloaded online that has a fill to go with that and it's called carte blanche and we had to change this filter so that it d Follow my sources correctly let's close this and do this again filter remove write here we go if you ever can't find your sources make sure your filters you can click clear filters like this you can click system and that will bring up the fonts you have uploaded.

I have a full tutorial on how to find backgrounds and load fonts in Cricut design space on a desktop laptop and in the iOS version of Cricut design space, so this is the one I want, it's called DK carte- blanche and I'm going to change it and you can see right away that this is going to be an amazingly awesome bold font right now. set to cut fine so make sure you change this to draw the line type menu in there Come on this is what it will look like when you draw because it's filled with these are kind of marks and this is quite unusual there are maybe a dozen of fonts that have a style type like this there isn't a lot and I don't know of any Willy's that are currently part of Cricut Access if you want this font it's on dafont.com so we have this set to draw on we have our label let's select both layers and let's go to a line and choose Center Them Like Before and then Attach Them There.

Come on, now our bold parents, your tag is ready to go, so let's get going with this one here. Now how about a fancy label? lots of things for you so you can make labels that are bold and beautiful so they are on my blog my blog is located at jennifer maker.com and these are free plates thats very clear my designs are always free and you go to red bar at the top of the screen and click enter library a and once you're in the library you can browse but I have a pretty long list of free files and it can be a little hard to find stuff I admit, so the best thing you can do is look on the page which would be typing on your keyboard command F on the Mac or ctrl F on Windows so here's a little window that pops up and I'm going to type the word pantry and it's highlighted there for me and all i have to do is click this file and it downloads and once it downloads i can open it and here are all the files and i have label shapes and i have written pantry labels so let's start with the shapes and i want it's the SVG file every time you upload now don't don't look like that, that won't help you; instead go to cricut design space click upload upload images and browse and then browse for the file that you so here is my downloads folder here is the file that i downloaded and here is the file Label Shapes SVG says SVG right in the file name if you ever can't see it make sure your window is fully expanded so you can see the full file name ok I click on that and we're going to open it go all the shapes here I have a lot of them we select them and then we click insert images to put it on our canvas and now I'm going to make the canvas smaller so we can see all these beautiful shapes there are a lot of shapes here I'm going to choose from I have a couple of different ways to do this I'm going to first ungroup using this icon on the top right so the labels here are separate and can be individually selected and I'm going to use this one here to show you how you can do a really cool border and I'm going to use this one here to show you how we do the nice Penda font and now go ahead and grab these and hide them for now we don't have to worry here is the group and we just click I to hide them since we're not here. working with them now i want to go back so i can see my files much better ok so here is one fancy label and here is the other one,nobody's not very fancy yet okay so for this first one here i made a pretty border now again this is done with the I mean technically you could cut it right off this label if you wanted to but I think it looks much nicer when it's anchored so we have to change this from cut to draw and it looks like this and you can even change the color because I wanted to make it teal so it's not teal and then we can put a name right in the middle I mean no we can take one of these or we can make a new one let's use one of the other cricket script fonts so i'm going to write flower and we're going to go to the font menu and it clicked on filter first let's click to get rid of our search our search result and click filter and click clear field fonts to be sure and then click write and these are all the writing fonts that are available and there are many, lots of options here lots of good ones for labels it would be things like be mine anything i mean sometimes that's not how your label your thick writing won't show so sometimes you just have to experiment and see what looks good on your font and this is kinda fun to design a label and working with layout space you will spend a lot more time styling your labels than clipping them thats the easy part actually i know it was for me so here is a font which is cute its called dandelion let's go ahead and change it to that so we can see what it looks like.

I'm going to click and drag it over our label and use a resize handle to get it to the correct size and I want to make sure it's the drawing that's selected as the draw and we're going to change it to the same pen color as our outline, which it was teal Jala because it will be much more efficient and yeah that looks amazing. I think just like before we need to select everything so we can't just click and drag a selection box. is it like this or actually you can for sure you know click on the layers to the right if you want and then click attach so now we have a fancy tag that will have this pretty leaf border around it and the word flower is ok , now let me show you my favorite and this usage is another file i created so let's upload it click upload upload image and browse and find the pantry tags pinned to the svg file and click open no this its a large image and you will get a warning on the above saying the image is large please be patient if you have a slow computer it could take a long time so please be patient once it loads you will see it here and then click save again be patient it's loading it's about I think it's three megabytes and it has to process all that data so be patient and let it load so once it loads do click on it so that it is selected with the green outline and then click insert images and wait a bit for it to load on your screen there. come on they're so pretty so these are all the SVG files I've created and they all use the pencil font and fill in to make this beautiful beautiful bold script font so once they're uploaded we need to ungroup them so we can select each one individually and click and drag the flower onto our label like so and I'm going to zoom in so we can see now remember what I said earlier that files are cut by default so if you look here on the linetype menu it says cut you don't want to cut this would be zero fun and it won't look good at all you want to draw it so click draw and you'll know it doesn't change the letters on the bubbles it stays like that and that's the magic of this SVG file I designed.

There are 55 tags in this file. I expect to have most of your pantry items of course not all of them for example some people have wheat flour, cake flour and white flour so that's ok let me show you. what to do so here's the flour and we're going to click the text again and we're going to type c ok so here's the word cake and i'll give myself some space ok this font doesn't look that good , no, these two did not go together, they are both too elegant. I recommend a much simpler font, come on. go to the font menu and let's just say that's a nice simple thought Cricut sans is probably ok and Cricut sans is free so let's select that forget sans is ok and make it all uppercase instead of lowercase let's say pie like that yeah like that better and then we'll use our resize handle to make it a much more appropriate size and click and drag this right here and make sure it says draw which is what it does guys I think it's super cute so we have our flower cape which is set to draw and we have our descriptive word which of course it doesn't have to have if you just use one type of flower and we have our fancy tag so again we select everything for that tag just a time tag and click attach , now we have four tags we have our simple basic tag we have way we have our bold tag and we have two fancy tags yeah aren't they cool?

Let's make the backgrounds the same on these so Cricut understands that we want to cut them all out of the same paper which is important to do so let's look for the background to find the label shape for each one so I'm going to select it and then to the right we'll see all layers highlighted click just one place value label shape and go to colors menu and choose white weight it's good because we're working on cutting these into them wait do the same for each of the others find the label shape click on it change the color to white and again here is the label shape and change it to white and since we are going to do this all on one sheet or at least try two we are going to change this the ink color we want to match the others so i'm going to change it back to black not fine gel point black and this is a major di stainction all this font of my flower here is designed specifically to work with the fine point pen the 0.4 millimeter pen which if you make it bigger I can't guarantee it won't look as good it could fill in a lot more but be very bold and you might lose some of the detail, so I recommend you stick to the fine point.

It is important to note that there is something else you will notice. fancy one you want to keep it about the same size you could go a little smaller or a little bigger but not much more without losing some of the cool stuffed bits so keep in mind this is designed specifically for open pantry labels Of course, I know they're going to ask me what if I want to make one of my own that they haven't thought of. I used a font to create them, it's called shelleyan script and I bought it online from thought packs.

I have a commercial license for and we're going to change it to that so here's fi lters type shelleyan here it's right here it's fixed this letter spacing drives me crazy that's not there come on that's a lot closer it's actually moving this around a bit down okay so it's important to understand that when we change this to draw it's not going to look like what I've designed, it's going to look like these bubble letters right? And of course we can get rid of the touching part, extending it by just soldering it and that looks a little better, but it's not the same as this now.

I did this. using an S creating an SVG in adobe illustrator so you can do it if you know how to do SVG and how to fill things in you can do it in inkscape or illustrator or you know of any kind of similar vector program that can generate an SVG but you're not going to get same effects as me just to be clear but maybe you just want to cut it out or maybe you want to fill it in by hand maybe you love coloring in that case feel free to make the bubble letters and fill in them with marker or something fun so so i think we are ready to try making these steps 3 cut and write your pantry labels its time to make these pantry labels we designed so when you are ready to go just click make it up on the top right corner and sends it to your preview mat. which has a draw layer and a cut layer and no other mats for other colors or anything like that, you can have multiple mats if you are doing a lot of labels but they should all be the same draw and cut in the same material color as we see it here and I'm going to rearrange it's just a little bit I'm going to move the simple here and then put the bold here and then this here and this here just so we can see them in order after we're done we're going to click continue and the build process is the same for the scan process there is no difference in how this will work so our machine is connected always make sure it is on and close to your computer so our first step is place them on label paper so click browse all materials and we'll go find the best way to find this is sticker paper with adhesive backing and click done and your pressure is b ok the way it is so it tells you what to do load up the black pen to hold and put your fine point blade clamp B and then load up the mat and hit the load button so now let's set up the same thing but for joy i have both machines hooked up so we can do it together so here is the exact same project and i have set this up for joy so let's just go ahead with the same thing and click the green do it button in the corner top right now joy asks us how we're going to load our materials and since we're doing a label paper and that's not a smart material we're going to say on the mat so this is for any material and then we click the mat and then done, it gives us this preview mat and again we need to check that we have everything in the same color and it says draw and cut it and this looks good but we can change the size of our material four and a half by six and a half to four and a half by twelve because we have a longer mat and I want to do the exact same thing that I did before and put them in order so it's easier for us to see how they did it in the order that we did it , so here it is simple bold and elegant here we go so we click continue for joy and we're going to do the same we're going to look for the right material now joy does not have the same material available so which what i found works best for label paper is to use premium vinyl and that's right here and go ahead and click done and i'm adjusting my pressure to less because it's a little bit stronger than i need so we have our maker ready to go and we have our joy of age. first for fun we'll do this at exactly the same time so you can see how it works let's switch to my workspace and load up our mats ok so i have everything up and ready to go here is my builder if you don't have a builder too you can use an

explore

r for this tutorial and here is my joy both plugged in and ready to go here are my materials and my mats the pens we will be using for cricut maker and explorer are these pens that say cricut explore on them they work for maker too, we want the dot for the tip pen which is important for this tutorial the color doesn't matter just the size so let's go ahead and delete it. and then for Cricut joy, we're going to use their pens, so Cricut joy is smaller and that means it has smaller materials, smaller pens, and even a smaller sheet, so everything is a little bit smaller, so we're going to use it the same nib size though so it's still a four millimeter fine point pen and that will be our pen again the color isn't that important ok so that's our pen now for the actual stuff we are going to try two different ways we are going to why just do standard label paper to see how that works that will do that both on maker and joy and then we will try smart label recordable vinyl which is really cool and then we'll compare and see which one really works better and another option that I won't show you but you can consider glossy sticker paper so this is matte white and this is a glossy sticker te so if you want your pantry labels to be transparent this is an option you can use to make it clear ok we're going to focus right now we're going to focus on our full white label stock so we have both of our mats and it's important to note that these mats are machine specific you need to use the 12 by 12 or 12 by 24 in the Explorer manufacturer and you need to use Ford 1/2 inch wide matt or no matt if you are using a smart mat Like the smart vinyl this doesn't need a matte you'll see in a minute so they have some smaller mats.

I guess I can't remember the cards. we have our label paper on our mats we have our pensready so layout space tells us to load the black pen into the clamp so we're going to do that for both machines now here's an important tip before you put your pen in your machines make sure it's primed and with by that I mean ink flow so we'll just take a piece of paper and literally write with it and it's not uncommon for it to start out as a little bit light and as we write it darkens nicely so it looks good to me there ok we'll go ahead and put this in the maker so we open up the clamp and put it in the maker until it clicks sometimes it doesn't click but you definitely want this little arrow you see here to mean the part top of your pen adapter so here click that clip there and then close the clamp and then put the cap on your pen so it doesn't get lost so let's prime the joy pen too and this one looks good no d uda is a newer pen I just want to make sure it's pretty much the same and looks the same to me so let's open up the cricket joy and take out the blade because it has a clamp put it on our pen it won't it will .

I'll feel a little bit loose it doesn't lock the same way this is ok just close the clamp like this and put the cap on ok so it's ready to go ok so now we're ready to load our mats into our machines So to load the manufacturer or the Explorer, you press it against the rollers and press the load button. The pleasure loads differently than you want to place it, but when you get close to the reels, it grabs it for you. There's no button there's no charger on the button like that and greatokay let's go back to Cricut design space so our creators are ready and all we have to do is hit the flashing button and our Joey is ready to go and in this case we hit the green button on the screen so i'm going to do this together at the same time so we can see them ready set now joy prompts us to put the sheet so we remove the sheet from the pen and press go on the screen and both machines cut our labels for us just like they wrote our labels and now they're cutting them and there we go they finish basically seconds apart so to download maker or explorer you hit the flashing download button and to download joy you actually hit the download button on the screen and it downloads for you and there we go these look wonderful so here are the tags now e Let's take a closer look at the one you filled with our pen, doesn't it look great?

He did a great job it's very bold and vibrant the label on the left written by the maker looks a little lighter than the one written by joy. I'm not sure if it's because the pen is maybe a bit older or the joy marker is better, but you probably wouldn't notice unless you were comparing them side by side. I think they would look really amazing, so that's our tags made out of tag paper, let's take them off the mat. I always turn the mat over to remove the material. Now, let's take a look at the smart tag stuff that's out there for the pleasure. this is recordable vinyl and you don't need a mat for it it's really great this is my first time using it it's five and a half inches by 48 inches long this is recordable vinyl i've never seen before so this is really quite exciting and you can see if you look at the edges.

I will hold it to the light. shine. It does not go to the edge and this is where the rollers will take you to the edge. All we have. all you have to do is unroll it enough so that you see that now the cricket joy feeds automatically. angling it and straightening it out like it does so I actually got it a little crooked initially and it fixed that for me which was really cool that's it that's all we had to do and now we're ready to go ahead and write ok so let's go back to the crooked layout space and make sure we've changed our material to be the smart vinyl so to do that we're going to click on this material line again and see if it's here the label recordable vinyl smart is here then and we want to use the default pressure we're going to put the black pen in so here's our pen and remember it doesn't lock and initially you have to close the clamp now there's a note here gel pens and the metallic markers they are not recommended for this material so just sticking with the normal fine point pen is the right choice and everything looks great and it's time for us to move on. go ahead and click ok and we need to put an iron vine tip sheet on our joy so we take out the pen put on the sheet near the clamp and press go to our screen and it's complete and press download so there we go , we have labels let's take a closer look at these the ink is beautiful I have to say first of all that's the biggest difference I can see right away is they just look beautiful let's compare these to the ones we did on the label paper before so you can see an immediate difference in the vibrancy of the ink so putting it on this label this writable vinyl definitely makes the ink really pop so these are very nice now I know what are you thinking we can use the smart label recordable vinyl on our Explorer or maker cutting mats well you know I love to try things so let's find out right now so here we have the vinyl or smart label writable and we want to put 9 inches in now, it's important to note that because there's this margin here right along the edges of both sides where the vinyl doesn't quite go, you need to position it so that or your labels move d over or you have this section moved a bit so there is vinyl right on the edge ok so load our creator let's put on my pen close the clamp put this on everything looks good moment of truth oh we should go ahead and get it right so we're back in the cricut design space things are looking good let's go ahead and hit the button ok that's done and it looks like it did and it looks pretty awesome label on the maker on the left here with the smart label done on the placer on the right I think the maker ink is not as bold as on the placer but otherwise they look great so it looks like you could use Your Explorer or Maker with Smart Vinyl - Step 4 Apply Your Pantry Labels to Your Jar Containers Attaching your pantry labels to your jars and jars is the easiest step First clean any surface you want to apply the labels to your pantry with isopropyl alcohol and a lint free cloth or wipe like a coffee filter this will help your label to apply and stick better now carefully remove the label from the backing and place it on your container as straight as it will go if you use label paper you will probably be able to reposition if you put it crooked but you won't be able to reattach the smart label very easily if you care at all just measure and ma rque with a pen that wipes off easily now here's an important note: the smart vinyl can should be peeled off the back with a finger just like I'm doing here, but if you find it difficult to lift, just brush the vinyl off around the label first and I definitely recommend you weed first for any intricately cut labels on the smart label otherwise your label may want to tear at the corners as you peel it off and I have a tip for you when placing your smart vinyl in a container start at one edge and smooth from edge to other edge this is going to help you avoid wrinkles and bu bbles so here is the question i have and maybe you have too which one of these it's better if it's the sticker paper or smart label recordable vinyl let's compare the first two tackiness smart label vinyl sticks alot ho better to containers than label paper after just a few days ago the label paper was already starting to peel off my jars which was very sad so if you use label paper you will need to reinforce them with additional tape or glue, but you don't have to do it with a smart.

Applying Vinyl Decal Ink The ink looks a little bolder and more vibrant on a smart decal vinyl than it does on sticker paper, so that's another smart label plus point. How about the looks? I definitely preferred the bright white and smooth finish of smart label vinyl to the matte finish of a label and smudge paper so that the ink is smudge-proof on the smart vinyl immediately after writing, whereas you should give the label paper a little more time for the ink to dry so it will want to be c good to touch at first eventually both the decal paper and smart vinyl are smudge proof now its important to note that none of these are washable, if you wash them the ink will bleed, but because this smart finish surface is glossy you can wipe Coconut dust and greasy fingers with a dry cloth on smart vinyl decals so much easier than you could clean with regular label paper that could absorb that dust or grease right now if you think you're going to be touching your containers often with wet or damp hands.

As and you don't want to risk ink bleeding, just spray them with a clear acrylic spray sealer a few times, you'll want to wait 5-10 minutes between coats. I have sprayed labels in the past and that works quite well and protects the ink. Keep in mind that you'll probably want to remove any excess vinyl from your smart vinyl before spraying it; Otherwise it might be hard to get your label off but when I look at all the factors between label paper and a smart vinyl it definitely comes out on top and that's what I'll be doing all my pantry labels on.

I am very pleased with how my pantry label designs and tests have turned out, although I can't quite decide if I like scallops. labels or the fancy script labels better I will have to use both and now that I have tried making them on different shackles and with different materials I know what will work best for me my vote is definitely for the vinyl material smart label and I am going to use Cricut joy because I can go to the mat list and that's easier and I can take it right into my kitchen and it will be so much more efficient I'm really impressed with this little thing I hope you found this tutorial helpful let me know what you think and also let me know what questions you may have about making your own pantry labels with your cricut.

Ask a question in the comments below this video or better yet, come over to my fabulous cricut crafters. Facebook group at Jennifer maker.com slash Cricut crafters if you don't already have a Cricut to cut your own labels. Giveaway a Cricut cutting machine. Yes, that's right, you can enter for a chance to win your very own Cricut. giveaway details at jennifer maker comm slash cricut giveaway and that's all for today do you have an idea for a future tutorial you would like me to do if you can tell me what you want to make i can show you how to make until next time this is jennifer maker reminding you to create a life you love