creating a bunch of qr codes but unfortunately i'm not sure why such a tool doesn't already exist for doing that
One option is Bitaddress.org (offline of course) > Paper Wallet > Hide Art > BIP38 Encrypt > Print 7 per page.
But it's Legacy. I know there's a Segwit version of the site, but I haven't used it (and wouldn't easily trust it).
the big question now is how many such qrcode private key/address pairs can be fit on a single page how many pages will it take to print all 1000. obviously the less the better but can we print on both sides of a piece of paper or is only one side best?
I wouldn't go smaller than Bitaddress.org's default QR-size, and I wouldn't use both sides of the paper.