DIY Moroccan Spice Jar Labels from Scrapbook Paper

The spice trade over the centuries has brought wealth and war to civilizations. But here, things are much simpler – it just brings Christmas gifts and hopefully some richness to food. I bought more spices than anything else in Marrakech. It was really a ridiculous amount. Here’s a set in my kitchen:

I don’t know how it happened, but it’s only been 5-6 weeks since I left Marrakech and the spices are in short supply already! We got greedy and ate it all ourselves! So we had to go to a local spice place to put spice gift packages together. We got spices in bulk and then they needed jars.

I didn’t want corporate-looking jars with brand names. So, scrapbook paper to the rescue! I typed labels in a Word document. Then I printed the jar labels and ingredient labels on scrapbook paper. Did you know you can print on scrapbook paper in a regular ol’ inkjet printer? Just cut your paper to size:

Most scrapbook paper is 12″ x 12″ but you can cut it to 8.5″ x 11″. As you can see, my printer tray maxes out at 8.5″ x 11″ but some printers will take larger sizes of paper. Just check your printer and cut your paper to the right size.

Then make sure you put your paper in the tray in the right direction. My tray says right side down. Then hit Print.

It’s as easy as that! I chose a paper in a spicy color. One tip is to choose a paper without a busy patterned background if you’re printing words. Words might get lost on a busy background. But there are plenty of papers with more subtle patterned backgrounds, like the paper I used from an Olde World book of scrapbook papers.

Then cut your label and attach it to your jar. I put some rubber cement on the back of my paper labels but that wasn’t enough to hold the paper securely to the jars. So I wrapped some jute around the jars and tied it in the back to give the jars a rustic look.

Jute is pretty rough stuff and you might wind up with some big pieces sticking out, like a bad hair day:

Just trim those pieces off and the jute will look neater.

You can also use ribbon or yarn instead of jute, whatever will give the look you want.

And that’s it – you can make a whole set of spice jars and package them in a theme gift box. You could even print labels on different colors of scrapbook papers.