Cartoon or animated movie characters are often the first choice for a child’s birthday party theme. How many little girls do you know who love Disney princesses or little boys that love Marvel super heroes or PJ Masks? Naturally they are your little one’s choice for their birthday party. We print custom party favors every day so we know something about creating personalized favor stickers for goody bags, favor boxes, or bottled beverages.

How to Make Your Own Personalized Party Favors with a Character

Party favors for characters like Anna & Elsa from Frozen the Movie are easy to find, but having your child’s name on the sticker is something special. That’s where our design online studio comes in handy. It allows you to add your child’s name to a variety of stickers. No matter if they like a minor character like Hei Hei from Moana or a wildly popular character like Sponge Bob, you can create and personalize a sticker for your child’s party. Let me show you how to make perfect party favor stickers for water bottle labels,  goody bags, juice labels, and more with a favorite character, in the same way we made the one below using our template called ‘Melted Snow.’ But first, there are a few things to consider before you get started.

What Files Can I Upload?

There are a lot of images of movie cartoon characters on the internet, but not all of them look good once they’re printed. There are a few basic things you need to know about choosing files that upload to the online designer and print clearly. This is because most web images are 72 pixels per inch and while that looks great on the screen, for really clear printing, a graphic or photo file needs to be 300 pixels per inch. That’s a big difference in pixels per inch; kind of like comparing your smart TV screen to the TV screen you grew up with. What this means to you is, you need to get the largest file you can find so your favors print nice and sharp.

These adorable water bottle labels from the movie Moana are not sold as a template on our website, but a customer uploaded their own artwork and ordered them using the ‘Make Your Own‘ custom water bottle labels feature. This is one example of making your own design for kid’s party favors.

Do This to Find a Graphic File that Prints Clearly

There’s a secret to searching for a good image that most people don’t know about and it helps you find a larger, more clear file. The example uses Google as the search engine. Follow these steps:

1. In the Google bar type in your search term. Here we typed in the rooster’s name from Moana.
2. Next,  put your mouse over the word IMAGES from the header line and click on it to see all of the search results.
3. When the images have loaded on the page move your mouse over TOOLS and select it. Under tools SIZE will display.
4. Next select SIZE. A drop down displays the various sizes to choose from.
5. Finally select LARGE (for a large file size) with your mouse. Now only the larger file results are displayed. Choose one you like. Hover your mouse over it to see the file size. Right click on it and ‘Save Image As.’ Name it and save it on your desktop.

TIP: Select files that are JPG or PNG. Do not use GIF files or try to use files from a video. If you see any jagged, pixilated, or blurry edges when you find a file, then that file will print jagged, blurry, and pixilated. There’s no fixing bad files. They will print exactly as you see them. Also, any files that say Index won’t work well. Index is a color and format issue that I won’t go into, but just know it’s low resolution for the most part and the online design tool doesn’t like that kind of file. So make sure you inspect the file extension name and make not of how it looks to you on the screen.

The best files are PNG files because the background is transparent around the main image. This allows for a background color to be added behind the character with out a white or black box showing around the character. The first file on the search results above was a large file but it looks small in size when clicked on. The second file is a YouTube file so pass on that. It takes about a minute or less to find a good file and the second row, second image from left is the winner. When you hover your mouse over it you see the file size is 784 x 1018.  A small file would only be double digits. It’s a PNG file too and is large and sharp. Below is a water bottle label created with this file. I saved it on my desktop, named it, and followed the steps 1, 2, 3 to create the design. After following the three steps, I only had to change the text color and font style from the default to get this result.

Follow these three steps to make a character party favor using the BYB design studio

Here’s what the Hei Hei label looks like once it’s printed. It looks great and was so simple to make! The label material is waterproof and colorfast. It comes with a crack and peel adhesive backing. All you do is peel off the backing and stick to the bottles.

Want this look? The bottle is a 12 ounce Aquafina bottle. The water bottle label size is 8.25 x 1.75.

Below is a photo showing how a customer created coordinating favor stickers using a Batman Lego graphic. The circle sticker on the goody bag is 2 inches in diameter. So simple, yet it looks like a party planner put it together. An eight ounce water bottle is perfect for little hands and a healthy alternative to sugary drinks.

Want this look? The water bottle label is the 8.25 x 1.75 inch size and it’s on an 8 oz. Dasani bottle.

What About Printing Artwork Purchased from Another Website?

Above is an example of a printable sheet of water bottle labels submitted by one of our customers. It was purchased from an online artist shop. We don’t print in this format. We set one label design onto the template within the online designer and as you can see this is a sheet of five labels. We had to crop the labels she wanted to fit into the template. There are quite a lot of artist stores on Etsy or Pinterest that sell printables with cartoon characters from every possible movie, book, or cartoon. Buying water bottle label artwork ready to print is not a bad way to go. There are a few issues I see with this.

Problems with Using Purchased Printable Files on a Home Printer

Number one, by printing labels at home you don’t have waterproof or self adhesive material to print them on. We do.

Second, you don’t have a million dollar print press that turns out professional results. We do.

Third, if your home printer isn’t set up properly you’re going to waste a lot of time and costly ink trying to get the stickers to print correctly.

And last but not least, why pay for artwork when you can make your own on our website for free?

When you buy a printable party favor file and want to use that artwork file to place an order with us, we’re happy to print them. We’ll probably need to check the file size and format for you since some graphic files work better with the online designer than others. We usually are able to change your file to the right format for uploading, just ask us.

Want this look? The bottle is an eight ounce Trader Joe’s water bottle. The label size is 8.25 x 1.75.

These Elmo First Birthday water bottle labels were made with a PNG file and uploaded by the customer. Different background colors were selected to create a rainbow of colors to match the party color scheme.

Want this look? The bottle in the photo is a Kroger brand grape-flavored 10 ounce bottle. The label size is 8.25 x 1.75 and wraps around with a one inch overlap.

These Disney Princess water bottle labels were personalized for a four year old’s birthday party. The customer originally ordered the artwork from a site that sells printable files. She then uploaded two designs and ordered the water bottle labels. Using purchased artwork and ordering the printed labels from BYB gives you the assurance that the labels are waterproof and look great.

If you have questions about personalized a sticker for your party email us at info at bottleyourbrand.com or live chat with us weekdays from 9 am to 3 pm Pacific time.