Dressing up your glass packaging: labeling options, printing, surface treatments and some emerging techniques add sparkle and brand imagery to glass containers.

Glass packaging offers a premium image. But you can elevate this image through fresh decorating options that add panache and visual excitement to glass bottles, jars and other containers.

What are your options? Consider a variety of labeling techniques, printing choices, surface treatments

Sometimes, using more than one type of decoration may give you the look you desire to support your brand imagery.

Let's examine a variety of decorating techniques to help you find the right choice for your glass packaging.

Labels offer different looks

Glass containers can wear pressure-sensitive labels, full-body shrink labels and heat-transfer labels. Each of these offers a different appearance, such as a 360-degree "billboard" or a "no-label" look.

Pressure-sensitive film labels deliver high-impact graphics through multicolor UV inks. You can add foil to these labels to foster a premium image.

Due to the clear film, the graphic image on the label appears to be floating on the bottle or container. This no-label look is similar in appearance to screen-printing. But you have many more color options and tighter print registration.

Over the past several years, the no-look label has become popular and advances in ultra-clear films and printing, such as high-definition flexo and digital, have made this the standard in bottle labeling, says Elisha Tropper, President of Prestige Label, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Due to the prevalence of this label style, creative marketers are looking for alternatives. These include pebble paper stocks on cosmetics, Tropper says.

"We find ourselves constantly being challenged by packaging designers to develop pressure-sensitive concepts that will elevate lheil package from the rest of their competitors. Sometimes, this means customizing a varnish or lamination," Tropper says.

For a new line of organic coffee syrups ham Flavorganics. Prestige Label created a custom paper face label with a "tuxedo" varnish. Trapper describes the finish as "satiny like a tuxedo's lapel."

This surface treatment, atone with simple and colorful label graphics, supports the elegant design at the bottle. The glass container--used for olive oil in Italy--has a square base and four flat sides that taper up to the neck of the bottle. The trapezoid-shaped front and hack labels follow the lines of the container and accentuate its shape.