DIY Personalized Wine Labels

If you haven't noticed already, I love anything personalized.  It makes everything seem so much more meaningful.  Anyway, on with the post.  When my cutie husband and I got married 3 years ago, some friends of ours gave us a persoanlized bottle of wine as a keepsake for the special occasion, and not just any wine, it was from our favorite vineyard here in Nebraska.  (I'm sure some of you out there are saying to yourselves, "There are vineyards in Nebraska?" and my answer is "We don't just have cornfields!") It was our favorite gift. 

The next fall I ordered a bottle as a gift for my very best friend to give to her on the morning of her wedding.  Unfortunately, the label did not turn out how I had in mind, so I contacted them and they sent me a new label.  She loved the gift, so I was pleased, but it still wasn't what I hoped for, so when it came to ordering wine for two more weddings the following summer, I had other plans in mind.

I did start out trying to order a personalized bottle from the winery, but had some issues, so I asked my computer whiz hubby if he could help me make my own labels and I would just buy the wine at the store.  He agreed and they turned out perfect!  I loved them so much, that I was jealous that we didn't have one that looked that good.  And my version was even more personalized than the winery's.  Here is what our bottle looks like:

Our names and our wedding date on the front

An inscription from our friends on the side.  I don't like that the inscription runs in the same direction as the monogram on the front.  It feels too cramped.

It's nice, but I thought we could make one that was much better! 

And we did!  Here is a picture our the label we made for our friends Melissa and Heeyoung

(I apologize for the poor photo quality.  It's taken of the computer screen because I didn't think to take pics of the wine before we gave it to them):

Instead of an unattractive photo of gold wedding bands in the background, I found a picture of them that I knew they both really love and used that.  We of course kept the name of the vineyard and the wine on the front of the label.

For the inscription, I chose to use a textured background using a similar color from their photo.  We changed all the fonts as well and rotated the inscription so that it didn't run into the monogram on the front of the label.

It was so easy to make.  All we did was measure the label from our bottle and went into Microsoft Publisher (because we don't have any of those fancy programs like Photoshop) and inserted a text box the size of the label dimentions.  Once that was done, all we had to do was fill in the information that we wanted to use.  Then to print it, we bought full sized, 8.5x11, sheets of label paper.  Once printed, we cut it out, peeled off the backing and attached it to the bottle.  And Ta-da!!  A personalized bottle of wine!!

**If you'd like a more step by step tutorial just send me an email.  This post was too long to add it here**