January Refresh: Kitchen Cabinet Decal Labels

This week for our January project series to show our spaces a little love, we're sharing a few ways to create custom labels for beautiful organization. Yesterday, Allie showed us how she designed fabric labels to catalogue her sewing room fabric stash. Today Caroline shares a tutorial for creating decal labels to personalize kitchen cabinet storage. 

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At the new Spoonflower office we have many simple and plain cabinets that all look exactly alike, so I figured using our wall decals I could label them for ease of use. Here's a simple way to organize your kitchen pantry, workplace, or any other space where some classification would come in handy.

I used Adobe Illustrator to create the labels-- the tools in Illustrator make it simple to quickly create files with exact measurements. I determined how big the labels should be by measuring the space where I wanted to display them on the cabinet. Once I figured out the sizes my labels would be, I chose the 15"X15" decal size for my project.

In Illustrator I made a new file that was exactly 15" x 15". Seems obvious, right? But the next part is the trick. Using the object tool, click once on the canvas and create a square that is also 15" x 15" and white. Move the square so that it fits exactly into the canvas area so your file will be exactly 15" square. This ensures that none of your image will be cut off when you print your labels!

While still selected, lock the selection.

Next, using the object tool again, create your labels, using the measurements you took when you started. Choose a shape for your labels, and select a font and color(s) you like. I made brown rectangles to coordinate with the cabinet color.

Then I chose the font "StrangeLoveNextWide" for the text and made it white.

The final image will look like this (I printed the fish as something fun to use the blank space in the square decal).

Once you have your file ready, it's time to export it to a PNG of 150dpi. This will optimize it for easy upload to Spoonflower.

I was very excited when I got my decal! Next it was time to cut out the labels. I used a cutting mat, a non-slippery ruler and a rotary blade.

Once the labels were trimmed, I peeled the backing off and smoothed them onto the cabinets.

Voila--  now everyone knows where the good stuff is located!

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About Our Guest Author

When Caroline isn't working on Spoonflower collateral or the website, she is home cooking up a storm or practicing her kickboxing moves and acting like a kid in a candy shop with her new sewing machine.