My Nametags: Affordable and Customizable Nametags Designed By You

With schools now breaking up for summer vacation, we parents are starting to think (fantasize) about back-to-school, and with back-to-school comes back-to-losing-things-at-school! My son, like most kids, manages to mislay his possessions in an endless variety of ways. Honestly, how do you create a situation where you come home with only one of your own shoes?! With COVID still impacting us all, it’s even more important than ever to try and minimize how much your child is handling other children’s possessions. My Nametags is a company that ships globally and makes it easy to label everything from clothing to pencils to try to minimize both missing items and your kid bringing home someone else’s things.

What are My Nametags?

My Nametags offers fully customizable labels including both iron-on and sticker varieties. The tags can be attached to everything from clothing to lunchboxes; they are fully washing machine, tumble dryer, and dishwasher safe; and they last for years without peeling off or fading. We have been using their standard custom stickers since my son began school in 2014 and many of those stickers we applied seven years ago are still in place and readable.

My Nametags sent us a sheet of each of their custom sticker labels, iron-on labels, and ministickers so we could check out the differences.

Designing Your My Nametags Labels

Getting your labels begins with customizing your design. On the standard size labels, two lines of text are available with a maximum of 15 characters per line which should accommodate the majority of names. The second line is optional and can be used to add a surname, parent’s phone number, or teacher’s name/class. Naturally, using the second line does make all the text a little smaller overall, but it is still easily readable.

There are seven different fonts available for your text with a mixture of script, handwriting, typewritten, and regular looks. On top of that, your text can be in any of 23 shades—although what you choose will be largely dictated by your chosen background as, naturally, many colors won’t show up well with certain backgrounds.

There are 215 backgrounds available for your labels. These include solid colors, patterns, and some images such as a beach scene, under the sea, forest, and a cloudy sky. Finally, you can add one of 365 different clipart-style pictures beside your text. There is a wide variety of images here including animals, star signs, sports, flags, and vehicles. There are also a number of allergy-related designs to help remind others of your child’s specific needs. Both the backgrounds and images can be filtered to help you find exactly the right design for you and your kids. No branded images are available (with two exceptions noted below) but enough generic designs are available that you should be able to find something relevant.

If my math is correct, these numbers mean there are over 12.5 million different combinations available at My Nametags, meaning that even the pickiest kid should be able to design something they’re happy to display on all their things! For privacy, I won’t be showing our final design here, but I had fun making some My Nametags designs for various fictional characters to show some of the variety of options available.

Ministickers

The Ministicker option allows for far less customization, with only one line of text and a maximum of 12 characters, but you do get 175 stickers per sheet rather than 56 of the standard, larger styles, making them ideal for labeling tiny objects like stationery, charging cables, and glasses. These tiny stickers don’t allow for background patterns or clip art designs, but come in four different color schemes:

• Rainbow (35 each of red, orange, yellow, green, and blue)
• Mint (35 each in five shades of muted greens and blues)
• Cupcake (35 each in five shades of pale pinks and purples)
• Plain (175 white)

Delivery and Packaging

Amazingly, My Nametags offers delivery anywhere in the world for just £1 (currently around $1.40). All our stickers took just a few days to arrive after placing our order, however, we live in the UK where the company is based so expect a longer delivery time elsewhere—it is suggested that deliveries outside Europe may take up to a month, so plan accordingly.

All the labels arrive within a protective cardboard sleeve in a flat envelope and include information on how to apply them. The package for the iron-on labels also includes several sheets of protective paper that you will need to place over the labels when applying them—much like the process for ironing Perler beads.

Application and Removal

The stickers are by far the easiest products to use because as with any sticker, you simply peel them off and attach them to the item. The stickers can be applied to clothing labels (only the shiny style of tags), plastics (water bottles or lunch boxes), and pretty much any solid surface you can think of such as stationery items, textbooks, and phone cases.

The one thing you cannot apply the stickers to is fabric. This means that you will need to use the iron-on style of label instead for clothing items without a shiny care label. Just like with the stickers, these are peeled off from the sheet and placed into position, but then you will need to cover them with one of the included sheets of protective paper and iron over it until the label has been sealed down. This means that the iron-on labels are far slower and more awkward to apply than the stickers, but I found it useful to have both types available for different items of clothing. The iron-on labels are also ideal for anyone with sensitivity issues that require them to remove scratchy care labels. The labels lie very flat to the fabric and have a soft texture with no scratchy edges so they should be suitable for most users.

Once applied, the stickers and labels are not coming off again unless you intentionally try to remove them—I have items that have been through dozens if not hundreds of washing machine or dishwasher cycles, and the stickers are still stuck down as well as if they had been applied yesterday. However, if you do need to remove them, the stickers peel off surprisingly easily. Very old ones may come apart into a few pieces but none have ever left any pieces or sticky residue behind when I have removed them before passing old clothes into new hands.

Verdict

My Nametags labels are one of those rare products that, having experienced using them, I simply will not use anything else. At around £12 ($15) per sheet, they are not cheap, but the convenience and reliability they provide are worth every penny. I have complete confidence that these labels will not peel or fall off when my son is at school or on a camping trip with Scouts, and I also know that when the new school year rolls around, I am not destined to spend several evenings slowly sewing name tags to clothing like my mother was forced to do every summer. As much as my son hates back-to-school season, he enjoys being able to personalize his labels each year and create something uniquely him. The colors and designs are as bold and sharp on the finished products as they are on-screen during the design process.

Away from school situations, the Ministickers in particular are ideal for anyone sharing space with others. Whether it’s students sharing a dorm, roommates in an apartment, residents living in care, or colleagues using an office fridge, these stickers will allow you to quickly and easily label Tupperware and electronics with an obvious and easy-to-read name. Of course, the easy-peel removal could be a downside if faced with anyone intent on maliciously causing difficulties—it’s easier to peel off a sticker than wipe away Sharpie after all—but for the most part, the stickers will make life easier as you won’t need to keep reapplying them after every few dishwasher cycles. The color options are limited but offer enough choices that most people will be able to find something suitable, even for the most professional environments.

Other My Nametags Products

A few other products are available from My Nametags beyond the ones we were sent to test. There are 22 styles of Maxistickers with themes including construction, emojis, floral, dogs, cats, and even zombies! These large sheets contain 21 stickers with cartoon-style graphics and room for two lines of text at a maximum of 16 characters per line. Going even larger, a small range of easy-to-apply and remove wall stickers are also available.

The only branded products My Nametags offer are Hello Kitty and Mr. Men/Little Miss. These designs have significantly more limited options (12 available designs for each) and cost fractionally more, but if you have a kid who adores either of these brands, then the options available are a lot of fun.

Disclosure: GeekMom received a sample of these items for review purposes.