Halloween Academy and all things Halloweeny

My etsy store has a plethora of labels for sale and I include instructions for affixing them with every purchase. But what happens if those instructions aren’t enough? What if you, like a normal person, don’t have extra brushes specifically for glue hanging around or random cans of 3M spray adhesive? What kind of ghetto rules can I give you for gluing things?…

Well, to be honest, the method I use.
See, I used to be a good little girl, using my spray adhesive, burnishing properly, that sort of thing. Then my spray adhesive, which was getting on in years anyway, just stopped working.
I don’t mean it ran out.

I mean it just literally quit working.

Oh, sure, it would spray, but what it sprayed was, somehow, no longer sticky. This concerned me as I had a ton of bottles to glue things to, no spray adhesive and an distinct aversion to paying the $8-$10 a can for the stuff.

I do have brushes for glue hanging around and I’ve used them a few times. I still break them out every once in a while for special things like hitting edges I missed and … stirring stuff… The fact of the matter is I found a way to glue labels that works well for me and is about as cheap and ghetto as you can get. Now you’re all going to be privy to my secret…

Ghetto Label Application

I use 3 pieces of paper. One is the staging area for the actual label, one is a palette for the glue and the third is the protective sheet. I tear some strips of paper off of the palette sheet and use them as a brush for the glue. I get some glue on one, then wipe it off on the palette in a clean area, then use the thin layer that is left to completely coat the back of the actual label (which is sitting on the first piece of paper). Pay close attention to the edges. When you’re done, the entire label should have a very thin layer of glue on it. Too much glue and it will slide around and it will also squish out of the edges when you’re fixing it to the bottle.
Once you’ve got the glue on there, carefully put it where you want it on the bottle. On a colored bottle be very careful as a lot of them are painted and the glue will make the colors run so you have to get it on there right the first time (this is where the spray adhesive comes in handy for colored bottles). On a clear bottle, you don’t have to worry so much because you can clean it up with a damp tissue or scrape it off with your fingernail after it’s dry.
Once you have it where you want it, you can kind of tap it down onto the bottle starting at the middle and working toward the sides. This is just to get it to stick a little bit. Next, cover the whole label with your third sheet of paper and burnish it. I’m super lazy so I use whatever’s lying around— plastic spoons and knives, rulers, credit cards, popsicle sticks, my fingernail— whatever gets it done. The thing about this stage is to hold that paper down so that it doesn’t slide around. If it moves, the glue that seeped out during the burnishing will move too and probably end up on your label. If you feel like your cover sheet has moved, lift it off carefully and turn it over, that way, no glue will get on your label.

-Never ever burnish directly on your label. Always use a cover sheet. The glue makes the label soft and wet and it tears easily until it’s dry.
If you’ve missed any spots or if some are still sticking up, use a clean spot on the paper and burnish that spot specifically until it stays down. If you’ve tried that and it still won’t stay down, you can always try to slip a little bit of glue under the offending corner, etc. and burnish again. Don’t coat it all the way, though. Since it’s a smaller area, most of the glue will end up squishing out anyway.

I hope this info is helpful to you. If you have another method of fixing labels to things, you’re welcome to share it. This one works for me and I’ve tried a few different ones.