packaging design ★ making belly bands for the first time!!

Hello my dears!! I got the notification that my belly bands should be arriving this Thursday (hopefully), so I wanted to share them with y'all cause I think they're real cute. :')

I've actually never made belly bands before?? It took me ages to figure out what this kind of packaging was called -- it's what you call the piece of cardstock that is usually wrapped around stationery (or even wedding invites) that holds the merchandise together. I made them myself for my stationery sets the first time around, and I simply didn't want to deal with that headache again. They looked cute but 1) formatting these was such a headache and 2) I had to cut them all myself which took ages because I'm a perfectionist :')

So! I'm getting them professionally made this time :D And luckily, CatPrint doesn't have any MOQ, so I can order exactly how many I need of each size. They also come pre-creased?? Which I'm a little worried about, cause I'm paranoid that the size of my products might be a bit different. So if you see extra score lines, please forgive me. Here's my try at making the notepads ones myself -- again, they look cute! But god are they a pain in the ass to format/figure out!

Also, since I'm getting them professionally done, I can get them printed on a ~satin lightweight cardstock~, so they'll have a nice finish to 'em too hehe

The way I figured out the sizes was just wrapping around either an 11" or 8.5" strip of paper (just chopped off from a normal letter sized piece of paper) around the products I was packaging together -- so either three notebooks, two notepads, or my stationery sets -- and if there was a gap, I just added an extra inch (or 3, or however many) as necessary to the final file length. The notepads one I knew I had to make longer than necessary for the 3" notepads so it would also fit around my 4.25" notepads, so I wouldn't have to order two different batches. 

There was so much math involved in this, it was annoying lol. Math is not my strong suit but our high school teachers were right when they talked about it being very practical and important in our day to day lives >:(

I'm currently in the process of designing the rest of my little "sticker pack" thermal labels -- I need to make one for my sticker sheet packs, and my "sweater girls" sticker packs. I also have some old holiday postcards that I'm planning on selling in little packs of 5, so I wanna design some labels for those too. I forgot how fun packaging design is hehe it's making me use a corner of my brain I haven't touched in ages!!

I hope y'all are doing well!! Happy Labor Day! Thank a labor union today :')