It’s that time of year when the harvest is done and the first frosts are scheduled to arrive. You have plenty of tomatoes and other vegetables that you’d like to can and preserve for winter food supplies. While you might recognize a jar’s ingredients because of that container’s transparency, not everyone will be as familiar with the ingredients of that jar. And, unless you label a can, there’s little anyone can do – including you – to help identify the contents. What can you do to eliminate that problem?

Personal supplies or gifts of vegetables, sauces, soups or jellies that you grew and canned yourself can be dressed up with personalized canning labels. A generic label that you design can be printed out and filled in by hand. If you decide to make a large batch of jam or other foodstuff, you can create pages of a specialized label to identify that container.

Designing your own canning labels is as easy as pie, but only if you know how to create those labels. If you design and print your own canning labels, you can save a ton of money as well. Here’s now to do it:

1. First, head to our autofillPDF labels to choose a label you can use. Be sure to choose one that includes an “Auto Image/Auto Text” link. For this project, we choose WL-OL125, a 4″ x 2″ label.
2. Click on the “Auto Image/Auto Text” link within the WL-OL125 box, and a page filled with ten labels will download on your screen:

Label download page.

3. If the blue areas are not highlighted, click on the “Highlight Fields” link in the upper right corner. Notice, too, that your image will fall on left side of each label, and that images should be no larger than 1.3 x 2 inches. Use a graphics program to save a photo that you have taken or use an image from an open source (such as Open Clip Art Library).
4. Once you’ve saved an appropriate image on your hard drive, click on the image section of the autofillPDF page to insert your image. Once you’ve chosen that image and clicked on it, the entire page will fill with that image (like our strawberry):

Adding image to autofillPDF document

5. Next, you’ll want to add text. If you’re making a full batch of at least ten jars of the same item, then you’ll want to fill in the text with the ingredients of the container, your name and date. If you’re making a batch of labels for a number of canned goods, then you can create a place for the ingredients, your name and the date.
6. To create the text for the labels, simply place your cursor in the highlighted blue field and begin to type away! Once you’ve finished, click your cursor in another blue highlighted field, and your text will appear in all highlighted areas within that page:

Add text to labels.

7. As a final step, you can save or print out the labels on label paper with adhesive backing.

Worldlabel has all the canning labels you might need, but be aware that you will need to pick out the correct paper for each autofillPDF label that you create. For example, if you want the WL-OL125, a 4″ x 2″ label, then you need to order the WL-OL125 label sheets for printing. You’ll discover that you can order various materials and quantities when you arrive at that page for ordering.

Other ways to create labels are to find labels that were created for personal use from other designers. Two such sites to find labels include Tipnut and A Sonoma Garden. But, you always can order paper from Worldlabel as an inexpensive online method to create those labels on your own printer.