With Christmas practically a fortnight away, your business may well be in the middle of a very busy period right now. It's not uncommon for sales to triple or even quadruple during the holiday season, and if you're posting items to your customers, this means that you'll be sending a lot of packages!

The chaos of the Christmas rush may leave you wishing for a way to speed up your shipping process, but it's crucial to get your packaging right at this time of year. It may be a chore, but each and every one of your customers is expecting a top-quality service, and if your products are being purchased as gifts for somebody else, it's even more important than usual to make sure that everything arrives in one piece.

So keep your packaging standards high, and don't forget the packaging labels!

These sturdy, self-adhesive labels are ideal for marking the packages that you send this December. If you are dispatching a fragile item or anything with specific handling requirements, it is imperative that you affix an appropriate label to the item's packaging. For example, if you sell items that are made of glass (or contain glass elements), you might consider using this label when you send them:

Another example: if you are sending a group of items, and you want to ensure that they are not separated, use this label to tell the courier how many packages are in the set:

Note that these highly-visible red labels are just one of the Packaging products we sell. Here are some other useful items that you can purchase from Label Source:

• Dispatch Labels
• Packaging Tape
• Packing/Shipping Stencils

Personal protection safety products are required under a wide range of health and safety regulations and guidelines. The objective is to create a safe working environment, and to prevent, wherever possible, accidents to the workforce. Our signs for the mandatory use of such safety equipment, includes protection to the body, head, eyes, ears, hands and feet, and emphasise the need to use the equipment as instructed.

Here at Label Source we want to ensure that you are kept safe when operating equipment at work, or if working in potentially dangerous environments, such as working at heights, confined spaces or in explosive atmospheres, to name but a few.

Our range of body protection mandatory safety signs promote the use of specialist clothing as protection from contact with chemicals, electricity, damage from hot or cold temperatures, or for reasons of hygiene. These signs act as a reminder to staff to wear the provided protective clothing, such as high visibility jackets, life jackets, lab coats and aprons.

Label Source also provides a range of signs informing people to wear head protection. These signs are used to inform and remind workers to wear helmets, hair nets and hard hats, protecting them against injury from falling objects, overhead obstacles, or hair entanglement.

Our range of foot and hand protection are available to inform workers to wear hand and foot protection, preventing any hazards including wet conditions, slippery surfaces, cuts and punctures, chemical spillages, electric shocks, infections, and contamination. This range includes signs reminding people to wear gloves, disposable gloves, boots, and anti-statics footwear.

Our final range of personal protection is to ensure the safety from eye and ear damage. Eye protection signs are used to inform and remind workers to wear protection against any potential hazards including, spillages, dust, radiation and gas and vapour release. This range covers, face shields, opaque eye protection, welding mask, glasses and googles. Ear protection, protects workers from loud or excessive noises such as use of machinery, transport or explosions. These signs remind workers to wear ear protection for your safety.

For our wide range of personal protection safety signs click here. Ensure that all your workers are kept safe by displaying these signs in and around the workplace. 

Every December, you hear dozens of ridiculous stories about health and safety and how it's ruining Christmas in one way or another. People are told that they can't put up decorations, throw snowballs, put coins in Christmas puddings, and so forth. All of this is nonsense; in fact, no less an authority than the HSE itself has published a list of safety 'myths' that circulate every Christmas.

As always, though, the biggest problem with these stories is the fact that they devalue health and safety as a whole, drawing attention away from real dangers that are actually worth thinking about. We're not here today to talk about snowballs and sixpences, but the holiday season does bring with it a few genuine safety hazards, and that's what we'd like to highlight in this blog post.

Here, then, are 5 simple safety tips for you and your family to bear in mind this December:

• Watch out for bad weather. The 'most wonderful time of the year' coincides with some of the nastiest - and most unpredictable - weather we see here in the UK. Pay attention to weather warnings, be cautious around icy surfaces, and if it snows, don't drive anywhere unless you really need to.
  
  
• Make sure the turkey is properly cooked. Food poisoning is sadly quite common during the holidays. If you're in charge of cooking the Christmas dinner this year, make absolutely sure that EVERYTHING is properly cooked before you serve it up. Don't let a pink bit of meat ruin your entire day!
  
  
• Don't drink too much. While we're on the subject of poisoning, let's take a moment to talk about alcohol poisoning - we all enjoy a couple of drinks on Christmas night, but go too far and your evening in front of the TV could become a night in A&E.
  
  
• Be careful with naked flames. What would Christmas be without a few candles (not to mention the open fire on which you're roasting those chestnuts)? Naked flames are fine, but keep them away from flammable items and be sure to blow out the candles when you leave the room.
  
  
• Don't hurt yourself while decorating at height. Yes, okay, we had to include one point about the decorations. The only real danger here is height: if you're putting up lights or tinsel in a high-up, hard-to-reach area, be sure to use a secure stepladder rather than balancing on a wobbly chair.

Have a merry Christmas, and be sure to stay safe!

You might think that electrical warning labels are only used in power stations and other industrial environments, but electrical hazards are all around us, and they all need to be properly labelled. By using the standardised black-and-yellow labels to identify potential electrical hazards, you are greatly reducing the risk of electrocution and injury by electric shock. This alone should be incentive enough, but consider also that unauthorised tampering with your electrical installations could severely damage your crucial equipment.

With all of this in mind, you need to stock up on electrical hazard labels if your electrical supplies aren't yet properly marked. Here are some of the relevant products that we supply:

 Voltage Labels

These laminated, self-adhesive labels are used to denote specific voltages (e.g. 240 volts), or simply to warn of non-specifc high voltage

Equipment Labels

These labels are used for individual items, such as computers and other electrical appliances. They gives specific instructions for the safe use of these items.

Electrical Warning Labels

We also sell a range of electrical hazard labels for general use around potential threats.

Click here to browse Label Source's entire range of electrical hazard labels and signs.

If you need to identify the risks and dangers in operating workplace machinery, to comply with your duty of care, then look no further. Label Source has developed a comprehensive range of health and safety signs and labels, to clearly warn workers of potential risks in operating on, or near, industrial plant, tooling, and machines, or when cleaning, oiling, servicing or during maintenance.

These safety signs and labels create awareness of risks of accidents or injuries from dangerous machinery use. These can include pinch or nip, punch, cut, wrap, crush or entanglement injuries, or accidents from sparks, and flying or falling objects. Injuries can be sustained to head, eyes, body, hands or feet, and can range in severity from minor cuts, scrapes and grazes to broken limbs, loss of eyesight, amputations, asphyxiation and even death.

Much industrial equipment and conveyors have a range of moving parts, including pulley drives, cogwheels, gears and sprockets, rotating cutters or blades, and a variety of exposed screws, keys and bolts, which can cause damage on contact with skin, or entanglement with clothing, jewellery and long hair.

Our signs clearly warn of these dangers, with associated prohibition activities (such as removal of safety guards), the use of necessary personal protective equipment (gloves, glasses, face shields, protective footwear etc.) when operating such machinery, and safety aids, such as eye wash, first aid and emergency showers.

All these health and safety signs and labels comply with the latest standards (ISO EN 7010) for graphics, colours and layouts, and to the Safety Signs and Signals Regulations 1996. These can assist in complying with the Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1974, the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998, and the Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998.