Not every label is a rectangle.
Round, oval, triangle, heart, starburst, speech bubble. Cut to shape on an A4 sheet, so they still go through the printer you already own.
Thirteen families over 634 dies, and 168 of them are not rectangles. These are cut to order rather than held on the shelf — one box of a hundred sheets is the minimum, and about a week from your order to your door.
After a plain rectangle? The stocked A4 range is through here — twenty-nine layouts in white and six colours, a hundred sheets to a box.
What a shaped label costs you, and what it buys.
Worth knowing before you fall in love with a starburst.
A shape reads before the words do
A round seal on a jar lid, a starburst on a price, a triangle on a warning. Somebody takes the meaning from across the room without reading anything, which is the whole point of the shape. On packaging that is already printed, a shaped label is also the honest way to add something without reprinting the lot.
One box, and about a week
The minimum is one box of a hundred sheets, of the one shape you want. Not a pallet and not a thousand — made to order does not mean committing to a year of them.
Order before midday and allow about a week to your door: three working days to cut and despatch, counting the day you order, then express post on top of that. After midday the clock starts the next working day.
The honest catch is that a shape wastes sheet. The gaps around twenty-four hearts are gaps you still pay for, which is why a rectangle the same size always costs less per label.
Thirteen families. Pick the shape first.
Every picture is a real sheet from the range, and the size under it is the one in the picture. The number of sizes is how many dies that family has, not how many we stock — nothing here is stocked.
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Round 36 sizes · 15–200 mm
Jar lids, seals and anything that has to sit centred on a curve.
Shown: 57 × 57 mm, 12 per sheet -
Oval 18 sizes · 19–280 mm
A long label that does not read as a box. Common on bottles and food.
Shown: 98 × 52 mm, 10 per sheet -
Bottle, arch and dome 36 sizes · 25–256 mm
Square at the bottom, curved at the top, so it sits flat on a shoulder.
Shown: 140 × 98 mm, 4 per sheet · Dome -
Triangle 11 sizes · 20–279 mm
Warnings and grading marks. Nested on the sheet, so the waste is small.
Shown: 66 × 66 mm, 12 per sheet -
Starburst 7 sizes · 42–284 mm
The shape that means a price or an offer without reading a word of it.
Shown: 150 × 130 mm, 2 per sheet -
Speech bubble 5 sizes · 26–80 mm
For a message added to packaging that is already printed.
Shown: 57 × 50 mm, 12 per sheet -
Heart 4 sizes · 28–70 mm
Seasonal and gift lines. Four dies, from 28 mm up to 70 mm.
Shown: 45 × 41 mm, 24 per sheet -
Donut 4 sizes · 34–73 mm
A ring with the middle removed, for a spindle, a lid or a cable.
Shown: 40 × 40 mm, 20 per sheet -
CD and DVD 12 sizes · 42–118 mm
The standard disc sizes, with the centre hole already cut.
Shown: 78 × 78 mm, 6 per sheet · CD -
Octagon, leaf, arrow and more 13 sizes · 15–202 mm
The odd ones: octagon, star, leaf, rhombus, arrow, flag, light bulb.
Shown: 50 × 50 mm, 8 per sheet · Octagon -
Security 2 sizes · 27–67 mm
Slit so it tears if anybody lifts it. Tamper evidence, not decoration.
Shown: 30 × 30 mm, 48 per sheet -
Mixed sets 20 sizes · 25–270 mm
More than one size on the same sheet, for a job that needs both.
Shown: 193 × 91 mm, 3 per sheet -
Rectangle 466 sizes · 5–295 mm
The plain ones, and there are 466 of them, from 5 mm up to a full sheet.
Shown: 99 × 57 mm, 10 per sheet
Getting your artwork to line up with the die.
Ask us for the template
Every die in the range has a PDF template — the shape, in position, at the right size, so your designer drops the artwork straight onto it instead of measuring off a photograph. Tell us the shape and the size and we will send it through. There is no charge for it and you do not have to order anything to get one.
It is worth having before you design rather than after. A circle laid out as a square with rounded corners prints as a circle with the words in the wrong place.
Two ways, and one of them is cheap
A new die is a one-off tooling charge and we will quote it before you commit to anything. It is a real cost, it is paid once, and it only makes sense if the label is an ongoing line rather than a single job.
For a short run there is a better way. A custom shape can be laser cut instead, with no die and no tooling at all. That stops being the cheaper option somewhere around two hundred sheets — so for a trial, a one-off or a seasonal run, ask about it before anybody orders a die.
These are the real dies, not our idea of them.
Every diagram on this page is the supplier's own drawing of that sheet, so the heart is their heart and the starburst has the number of points it actually has.
That matters more than it sounds. The first version of this page used shapes we drew ourselves from the sizes, and the triangles all pointed the same way. The real sheet nests them, alternating up and down, which is how twelve of them fit without wasting half the page. The picture was plausible and wrong, so it went.
Three things and we can quote it.
The shape, the size, and roughly how many sheets a year. None of them are compulsory — if you only know the shape, send that.
Not sure a sheet is what you want?
Send a photograph of the box, or of the thing you are labelling. Thirty-five years of this says the answer is usually obvious from the picture.