I started making my own diaper tapes (2024)

After seeing some of the diaper tapes that people have made, and being quite impressed; I have decided to try to make my own. I'm not a graphic designer, so the whole experience has been quite a journey. I wanted to try to make diaper tapes that represent modern baby diapers from some of the big brands. Since most (if not all) modern baby diapers have all over print, I made "composite" diaper tapes that use elements from the both the tape panel and the all over print from a specific diaper. As such, my diaper tapes won't be an exact replica of a specific diaper; instead I made a single tape that captures elements of the entire diaper. They took me quite some time to make, but here was my basic approach:

- Buy a pack of baby diapers (duh)
- Tear the cloth-like back cover off to expose the plastic panel (with printing) underneath
- Cut the shapes/patterns/logos out that I want to use to make my tape
- Scan the cut-outs into my computer at the highest resolution possible
- Use a photo editing program (I used Gimp) to edit, fix, and layout my cut-outs and background
- Set up my final diaper tape image to print out on 8.5" x 11" paper

This went better than I could have ever imagined. There were certainly bumps along the way, and it took a couple hours just to learn the software and how to use the tools. Again, I'm not a graphic designer so I'm sure there could be more efficient ways of doing this; but I'm very pleased with the results. I'm also aware that I could have sourced some of the imagery from the internet; but in order to keep it as authentic as possible, I really wanted to use the artwork off the actual diaper. Plus, I consider the slight imperfections in my designs to be authentic, given the amount of imperfections on the diaper itself. There are some elements (due to complexity beyond my knowledge) that I had design myself instead of trying to "fix" the actual artwork. I tried to keep this to a minimum.

The first diaper tapes I created are meant to resemble the current Pampers Baby Dry, size 6. Please let me know what you think! I would love to hear the constructive criticism, feedback, positive comments, and suggestions. I very much intend to make diaper tapes for current Pampers, Huggies, and Luvs diapers; with more to come after that. My diaper tapes measure 10.5" x 3", so you can print them on 8.5" x 11" paper (landscape). They are in TIF format.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14yWCAEaXAKgUNKd275OBEhyFdCzY4qaX?usp=drive_link

P.S. - Does anybody know if the same design is used across different sizes of a specific diaper? In other words, is the design different for a size 2 Baby Dry diaper vs. a size 6?