an easy way to dress up water

Last year, for our wedding, we decided to prepare “Welcome” bags for all of our out-of-town guests. In doing so, we rounded up bunches of goodies for their weekend stays in Monterey, and stopped by Costco for most of the supplies.

Now since it was a wedding, there was a temptation to “brand” us everywhere, right down to the water bottles in the bag. One of the essentials for our bags was water, and when I went to modify our Kirkland brand water bottles I discovered something quite delightful. It just so happens that the labels are exactly 8.5″ long… in other words, the same exact width as a normal piece of paper! So, thinking of how much cheaper the task would be with paper instead of labels, I created a quick template, cut up some sample labels and soon discovered that the process was not only cheaper but 100x easier!

At our picnic on Thursday, I repeated the “trick” for my coworkers, and once again it was a hit. The template I created mimics a REAL bottle of Kirkland water quite closely… so once you add the logo, it’s very deceiving. In fact, our marketing team approached me with a firm sense of disbelief in my self-taught Illustrator skills.

As for printing them, I used a color laser printer or copier both times. This way, the ink can’t bleed at all. You can always use FedEx Kinkosand their print-at-home service if you need help as well. I believe that 7 pages (enough for all 35 bottles in the case) came to around $4?

Now, if you’d like to quickly impress others with some custom labels, I’ve paved the way for you to do so below. The templates below are available to customize in AI and PDF formats and are available in white text (for custom dark colors/patterns behind) and black text.

BLACK LETTER Water Bottle Labels

White LETTER Water Bottle Labels with patterns!