Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Thermo Printed Recycled Shipping Label

I’m always trying to make products and cohesive packaging from as much recycled materials as possible. Today, in the course of experimentation, I happened upon a bit of fun paper magic.
I wanted to create a sticker to hold a pleated tissue around my birds nest earrings, and grabbed, from my saved paper stash, a return label from an Amazon package. I chose it for its thinness because I wanted to paper-cut a heart rather like a snowflake. It folded and cut beautifully and after unfolding, I decided to flatten it with a warm iron. That’s when I discovered that it is thermo paper and it turned from white to black immediately. I really liked the way this looked and I lightly glued it into place.
I had to play some more! A brush with a warm iron created a lovely mottled effect on one side while remaining white on the other. I cut another heart shape and using a die-cut cardstock heart as a heat mask, applied the iron to it. I played until I ran out of scraps. I can’t wait to scrounge another label and play some more.

1 comment:

  1. That looks awesome!

    I guess it is thermopaper to save on the ink. Makes sense though. :)

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