First you learn how to use some sort of graphic drawing applications. Usually they boil down to 2 types "
raster" and "
vector". Raster is easier if you want to paint free from. Vector is better if you want exact shapes. The application you may already have is probably "raster", in that case remember that pixels and real world units like inches don't always match unless the DPI ratio is fixed at print time. I recommend 600 DPI, which means multiply the number of inches by 600 to get the number of pixels.
The GNU Image Manipulation Program and
Inkscape are 2 nice free drawing applications.
For what size you should draw things in,
when I did a label I measured the total area of a NES label to be 55 by 98 mm (or about 2.175 by 3.858 in). Earlier, tepples
made a label at 200dpi which results to 432 by 764 pixels.
I'll let others mabye answer for how to print the pictures you draw and what to print on.