2015 #23 Jewelled Bottles {By Liz Borer}

2015 Topic 23: Christmas Gifts and Cards

Hi there everyone , Liz back for a last blog post for this year . Happy Christmas to everyone.

I found these quirky bottles in Ikea recently and decided to alter them. For some reason I decided to add gilding flakes to the inside of the bottles. This of course led me to trying to work out how to adhere the flakes to the glass. 

I decided to use the PaperArtsy crackle effect because I could be certain that it would stick to the glass (just as the paints stick to the glass) and I knew that it would be sticky when dry. 

The problem was how to paint the glaze onto the inside of the glass! In the end, I stuck together the end of an old paintbrush and a piece of wire, so that I could manoeuver the brush around the inside of the bottle. I think that it would have been much easier to use a straight sided bottle with an wider neck. 

After painting the glaze randomly inside the bottle and letting it dry, I pushed gilding flakes into the bottle and shook it to help them stick to the glaze. I needed to use the "paintbrush " to push the flakes into the glaze and pat them down more firmly.

Just thought you might like to see the "paintbrush" that I made!

I wanted to add colour inside the bottles to make the gilding flakes show up. I poured PaperArtsy paint down inside the bottles rather randomly. To start with I used various shades of turquoise. The bottle has to be moved around to help the paint spread. Only use a little colour at a time and add more as needed.

I then added more paint in shades of blue and purple. The paint takes some time to dry and as it dries it reacts with the crackle glaze to make interesting effects ! I didn't expect this to happen, but it's lovely.

These bottles didn't have stoppers . So I made them using round wooden balls and small brass drawer knobs. I found the best way to stick them together (and to stick them onto the bottles) was to use silicon or pinflair glue and let the glue dry completely. The stoppers were then panted to tone with the bottles and gilded using crackle glaze and gilding flakes.

Once the insides of the bottles were finished I decorated the outsides.I painted some craft metal with some of the colours I had used in the bottles and then stamped flowers from Squiggly Ink Egg and Nog 4 onto the metal. The flowers can then be cut out, and painted with random splashes of gold paint before being shaped and stuck together. I added a pearl to the center of the flowers.

The stoppers need to be adhered firmly to the bottles before the finishing touches are added. I spread some pinflair glue randomly down the outside of the bottles and stuck seed beads in a variety of colours to the glue.

Finally I stuck the metal flowers to the bottles and added a few gold embellishments here and there.

That's all for now folks , have a great Christmas, Happy New Year .

Liz

You always seems to come up with quite imaginative ideas Liz! I am sure Mr Ikea never dreamed his bottles would end up like this! Love the idea with the crackle glaze on the interior!! Merry Christmas to you too! ~Leandra

Note from PaperArtsy: Normally tonight would be the end of the current topic, however, as Christmas week approaches, and there is no challenge to report back on, we are continuing with last minute gifts, card and wrapping ideas, so there are a few more posts on the current topic this week, and then we will be back after Christmas with a round up of how 2015 happened here on the PaperArtsy Blog, a chance to look back and reflect once the hustle and bustle of Christmas is over!