I’ve done a bit of a seach here and I don’t think I’ve found the answer I wanted.
I thought I had amateur label-making down to a fine art. I have various sizes of white sticky labels, different coloured biros and various widths of clear sticky tape . I colour code the different mg stengths with the biros, so that even if it smears, I still know how much nic (if any) is in the bottle by the colour of the smudge. 0mg is green, logically enough, and my highest mg is red. Then I do my damnest to prevent smears by covering the lot up with clear sticky tape. I’m very generous with the tape., not the slightest corner is left uncovered . Yet still, somehow, some of them manage to smear anyway, which is insanely annoying when it’s, say, an SF test that;'s been steepingfor probabl;y a month or so (no knowing cos the date is smeared out) and might be at 0.5% , or might be at 2%, or any number you like, it’s completely illegible.
So…does anyone know of a (preferably half-way economical) way of making smear -free labels. Never mind if some labelling machine manufacturer claims that their labels don’t smear. Do you have such a machine and does it really work out in practice?
Also, I’ve been wondering if shrink wrap might work better than sticky tape? Anyone tried that?
But that’s just a version of my method. I want to know what you’re doing that’s different from me! I mean, besides generally being a whole lot more competent and awesome
Hmmm, well, your labels are not self-adhesive. That;'s different, but that can’t be it, can it?
Well, I don’t need my labels to look like professional made liquids… people would run away with them like when I was walking around with lighters, they were also always disappearing.
It’s cheap, it looks like DIY, it works for me so I have no need to invest more money in something that doesn’t bring added value to me.
When you get more professional labels, you’re also going to get in trouble when you have different sizes and shapes of bottles. My method works for everything
Believe me, my labels do not look the least bit professional They are scawled all over with my notoriously messy handwriting, which I do manage to just about make legible, if I concentrate.
I don’t need a professional look, just smear-free, and if professional gear is what it takes, well I might just go down that route to save myself frustration.
I use this to print my label and the problem is they don’t sell moisture resistant labels
so what I started doing is sealing them in clear heat shrink bottle tamper seals
works pretty good https://www.brother-usa.com/products/QL700
The ribbon printer can print very small labels, down to 6mm width. The faff of having to prepare the label on computer/device is more than I am ready to put.
An 18mm/24mm label in portrait would do fine on a 30mm I reckon, as on the photo above
There is a brother model where you can use a tablet/phone to design the label and connect via Bluetooth. Felt like the best option to me when I thought about it.
Thanks for the suggestion @tartarusspawn and everybody else.
My question is can you knock the bottle over and leave it swimming in an unnoticed pool of vg on the counter and still read the label a day or two later?
Now, i’m not saying that happens to me all the time (though it did happen once , TBH) I’m just trying to come up with an extreme example of the kind of stress a label might have to endure (especially around myself, cos I’m notoriously clumsy , and when my clumsiness reaches the extemes that I might as well just go bed, well, then, I just drop everything, go to bed, and clean up the next day)
I simply print a label on a normal laser printer on normal paper, cut it out and use clear packaging tape to cover and attach the label. Before getting some package tape I used normal scotch tape that didn’t cover the entire label with one piece, but overlapped the individual pieces of tape top-down like roof tiles, so no drops would get in between the two pieces of tape.
I don’t know exactly why you get this problem @jay210, but perhaps it is because you are overlapping pieces of tape the wrong way, so drops get trapped and are “guided” in under the tape.
Edit: Not sure this method would survive being completely submerged in liquid, but it should be able to withstand normal drops or spills of liquid.
neither do I! I most often don’t need to ovelap, but where I have overlapped (eg when none of my tape was quite the right width for the bottle in question) i’ve done it exactly like you.
I think it’s maybe just that nothing is quite foolproof enough for a fool like me. if there’s a way to cock it up, i’ll generally find it.
They are scawled all over with my notoriously messy handwriting, which I do manage to just about make legible, if I concentrate.
I reckon, as on the photo above
I most often don’t need to ovelap, but where I have overlapped (eg when none of my tape was quite the right width for the bottle in question) i’ve done it exactly like you.
