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Open any craft room storage post and you will find plenty of advice on bins, shelves and drawer units, but almost nothing on the part that actually makes a system work day to day: the labels. A beautifully organised craft room without labels quietly falls apart within a month, because nobody can remember which drawer the washi tape ended up in. This guide is entirely about that missing piece. No downloadable label set to promise you, just a proper walkthrough of how to plan, design, print and apply labels that hold up to real craft room use.
Table of Contents
Start With an Audit, Not Everything
Before you open a design program, walk around your craft space with a notepad and look at what you actually reach for. Not every container needs a label, and labelling everything in sight usually backfires because it turns a useful system into visual clutter.
A few categories tend to earn their label every time:
- Bins and drawers where the contents are not visible from the outside
- Jars and containers holding similar-looking items, such as buttons, beads or embroidery floss
- Shelves where several people share the space and need to find things without asking
- Cubbies and modular storage units where one missing label breaks the whole system
Clear containers with obviously different contents, like a jar that is visibly full of pom-poms, rarely need a label at all. If you glance at it and instantly know what is inside, save your labelling time for somewhere it will actually help. For a fuller look at setting up the space itself before you get to labels, How to Keep Your Craft Room Functional (Setup + Maintenance Tips) is a good starting point.
This audit does not need to take long. Twenty minutes with a notepad, walking round the room once, is usually enough to end up with a short list of containers that genuinely need a label rather than a vague sense that “everything should probably have one.” Write the list down before you design a single label. It keeps the project focused and stops you from labelling your way into a bigger job than the one you actually set out to do.
Choosing a Label Style That Works for You
There is no single “correct” label style, but there is a style that fits how your brain sorts things, and picking the wrong one is often why a labelling system quietly gets abandoned.
Text-only versus icon and text. A text-only label is faster to make and reads cleanly on a shelf from a distance. An icon paired with text helps if you are labelling for a shared space, such as kids who cannot read fluently yet, or if you simply prefer a quicker visual scan over reading full words each time.
Category labels versus contents labels. A category label says something broad, like “Ribbon,” and works well for a drawer that holds several related items. A contents label is specific, like “2-inch grosgrain ribbon, cream,” and suits a system where you have multiple containers of a similar type sitting side by side and need to tell them apart at a glance.
Colour-coding by craft. If you work across more than one craft, assigning a colour per craft type (say, teal for card making, lavender for sewing) lets you find the right shelf zone before you even read a single label. This works especially well on open shelving where colour is visible from across the room.
Most craft rooms end up using a mix of these rather than picking just one. A shared colour-coded system for the big zones, with contents labels on the individual jars inside each zone, is a common and effective combination. As an example, a card-making zone might use a teal colour band across every bin in that area, with each individual bin then carrying a specific contents label such as “Cardstock, A4, cream” or “Envelopes, C6.” The colour tells you which zone to walk to, and the text tells you exactly which bin to open once you get there.
Sizing Labels to Your Containers
Label size only works when it matches the container, and this is the step that gets skipped most often, resulting in a label that is either too small to read or so large it wraps awkwardly around a curved jar.
As a rough starting point:
- Small jars and spice-style containers: labels around 1 to 2 inches wide, sized to sit flat on the lid or a flat front panel
- Standard drawers and bins: labels around 2 to 4 inches wide, designed to be read from a normal standing distance
- Shelf and cubby labels: larger, often 3 to 6 inches wide, since these are read from further away and benefit from bigger text
When you print your own labels rather than buying a pre-cut set, you are working from a full page and cutting or cutting-machine-cutting the individual labels out yourself. Print layouts in this guide are given for A4 first, with US Letter sizing as the second option, since page dimensions differ slightly between the two and it affects how many labels fit per sheet and where your margins should sit. If you are printing from a template built for the other paper size, double check your print dialog is not auto-scaling the page, or your careful measurements will not match what comes out of the printer.
Before you commit to a full sheet, print a single test label and hold it up against the actual container. It takes an extra minute and saves you from printing twenty labels at the wrong size, which is a far more common mistake than it sounds like until it happens to you once.
How to Make Your Own Label Template
Since no downloadable label pack exists for this post, here is how to build your own, using whichever tool you already have on hand.
Canva. Search “labels” in Canva’s template library, or start from a blank page sized to A4 or US Letter and use its grid and alignment tools to lay out even rows and columns of your chosen label size. Canva is a solid choice if you want to change colours or fonts easily to match a colour-coding system.
Something like this template would make a great starting point and you can easily add design elements to it.
Microsoft Word. Word’s built-in label templates (under Mailings > Labels, or a labelled template in the template gallery) let you set consistent label dimensions across a full page and are a familiar option if you already do most of your planning documents in Word.
Cricut Design Space. If you own a cutting machine, Design Space lets you design text and simple icon layouts, then print and cut them as a single project rather than printing a page and trimming labels by hand afterwards. This is the option worth using if you want clean edges on shaped labels, not just plain rectangles. Understanding Cricut Design Space: A Complete Guide walks through the software itself if you are new to it, and What Kind of Cricut Machine is Best for Beginners is worth a read if you do not own one yet. For label projects specifically, a compact machine like the Cricut Joy 2 handles print-then-cut label sheets well without needing the larger mat sizes a full craft room cutting project would call for.
Whichever tool you choose, build one template per label size you need rather than trying to make a single template serve every container in the room. It takes a little longer up front and saves you a lot of fiddly resizing later.
Printing and Applying Your Labels
This is the step where a good design can still go wrong, so it is worth getting the materials right.
Sticker paper versus cardstock. Printable sticker paper gives you a self-adhesive label straight out of the printer, which is the fastest route if you want a permanent-feeling label without extra steps. Cardstock, on the other hand, needs to be attached separately with tape, glue or a label holder, but it holds up better in a cutting machine and gives you more flexibility if you plan to swap labels out later. Printable sticker paper built for inkjet or laser printers, matched to your printer type, gives the cleanest results.
Laminating. A quick pass through a laminator, or even clear contact paper if you do not own one, protects labels from the inevitable spills, sticky fingers and general wear of a working craft space. This matters more for labels on frequently handled containers than for ones on a high shelf that rarely get touched. Laminating pouches sized to your label dimensions make this a five-minute job rather than a hassle.
Label holders versus adhesive. Adhesive labels are simplest but permanent, which is a problem the moment your stash shifts and a drawer’s contents change. Clip-on or slide-in label holders cost a little more upfront but let you swap a paper insert in seconds, which is worth it for any container you expect to relabel more than once a year.
Removable options. If you are renting, sharing a space, or simply hate commitment, removable adhesive designed for the specific surface you are applying it to (plastic bins behave differently to glass jars) avoids sticky residue when you eventually peel a label off.
The Cricut cutting route. If you already have a cutting machine loaded from the template step above, cutting labels to size as part of the same project you designed them in saves a separate trimming step, and produces sharper edges than scissors on curved or shaped labels.
Keeping Your Labels Current
A labelling system is not a one-time project, and pretending it is is exactly how good systems fall apart. Stashes shift as projects change, new supplies arrive, and old ones get used up or donated.
Build in a simple relabel routine rather than waiting for the system to visibly break down:
- Do a quick label check whenever you reorganise a shelf or bring in a big new supply haul
- Keep a small stash of blank labels and a pen on hand for a fast temporary fix between proper printing sessions
- Revisit your full system every few months, not because it needs a redesign, but because a five-minute glance catches drift before it becomes a mess
If you are working in a smaller or shared space, Small Craft Space Ideas: Closets, Corners & Shared Rooms has more on making a compact system hold up under daily use. And once your bins and drawers are labelled, the containers themselves matter too. Stackable clear storage bins with lids pair well with a clean label system since the clear sides do some of the identifying work for you, leaving your labels to handle the details a glance cannot.
For supply-specific storage advice that goes beyond general labelling, Knitting Supply Storage: A Complete Organisation Guide and How to Store Embroidery Supplies (Without Losing Half of Them) cover the container side of the equation in detail, so this guide could stay focused on labels themselves rather than repeating that ground.
A labelled craft room is not about looking picture-perfect. It is about being able to grab what you need in ten seconds instead of pulling three bins off a shelf to find it. Start with the audit, pick a style that suits how you think, and build the habit of a quick relabel check, and the system will keep working long after the initial project is done.
