Of Ink and Labels - A Tale of Woe

I had a minor 'incident' last night - disaster is probably too strong a term to use in this instance - in connection with printer ink and labels. In a nutshell the ink gave out whilst printing the vehicle sheets.

This was not so bad as I already had replacements in stock and so was able to duly change the cartridges (3 out of the 4 - it is an HP Photosmart Wireless printer). Problem solved - or so you could be forgiven for thinking (as was I).

Unfortunately I had also run out of the Rymans own A4 label sheets - this was not so good - but again, I had a fallback contingency in place. I merely made use of some other sticky labels - after having moved the images around on the page to avoid the label gaps.

I should perhaps point out that the two vehicle sheets were not complete write offs as only one column of images was affected by the 'streaking-due-to-the-ink-running-out-effect' and so the remainder would be OK to use. This was my thought in any event.

Feeling very pleased with myself and my new found technical expertise I printed off the replacement labels.

Oh dear - this was where it all went horribly wrong.

The labels I used for the replacements were of a far better quality than the Rymans version and boy did it show! Not only are the colours much sharper (and look different in terms of shade) but the paper is far better suited to inkjet printers.It also has a really nice matt sheen that was only noticeable when placed alongside the Rymans version.

For choice I would prefer to use the more expensive labels but I have already labelled up three sets of blocks using the cheaper version and so do not fancy having to redo them. What I will do though will be to use the more expensive labels going forward.

The moral of the story then is to ensure that you have sufficient materials of the correct quality to tackle the job in hand!