Encore - Magic Potion Bottles

Encore Posts

Projects which made their first appearances elsewhere for Design Team duties or Guest Designer opportunities, but which only had a sneak peek here, are being gathered together in the pages of my virtual scrapbook while I'm away.
As always, the Encore Posts are formatted differently from the regular ones, so that you can easily spot them.  Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!

These altered bottles were created back in August 2015 as a Guest Designer spot for Anything But Cute - a great mixed media challenge blog which sadly is no longer in operation.  These were the result of one of my "what if?" moments, inspired by their moodboard that month.  Here's what I wrote back then....
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Hello all!  I'm delighted to be here at Anything But Cute.  I was so excited when Pamellia invited me to be a guest, but also a little daunted since the amazing team here produce such outstanding creations.  Pamellia also said that I could make anything I liked - no limits - which is always slightly terrifying... but as soon as I saw the beautiful moodboard for this month's Making Magic theme, I knew that it would be inspiring my project.  So I offer you my mystical magic potion bottles - handed down from white witch to white witch along with the spells for making dreams come true and making time stand still.

It was very hard to get a decent photograph of these, especially since we've had so much horrible weather here in the UK - with all the shimmer they change in every different light angle - but I hope you'll be able to get the idea as we go along.

I started with some vintage glass bottles.  I managed to get a job lot on Ebay for a good price, working out at just less than £1 a bottle (well, I thought it was good).  

The first task was to give them a couple of coats of gesso so that any media I applied would take on the surface.  (I had a few on the go at once - I like that as it takes the pressure off, and I now have a number of very different looks ready to share soon over at Words and Pictures!).

I then wanted some crackle, so I applied DecoArt Media Crackle Paint in various thicknesses over the bottles.  I got some great cracks and, to be sure they wouldn't start flaking off, I sealed the whole thing with the DecoArt Ultra Matte Varnish before continuing.

I stamped one of my favourite branches and then got busy with some spritzing.  I thought I'd start with a layer of the DecoArt Media Sprays - they give good coverage and are permanent once dry.

After that I gathered some of my Silks Acrylic Glazes - various blues and greens as well as the Emperor Gold - and started applying them over the spritzed crackled bottles.  At some point I also did some glazing with a Tattered Angels Glimmer Glaze.

I'm afraid I wasn't paying too much attention... I was just layering up shimmering colours adding depth and shading.

I also used Treasure Gold in Florentine to highlight some of the texture - both the crackle and, of course, the fabulous embossed writing on the sides and reverse of the bottles.

The photo in the moodboard which really captured my heart is the tiny golden droplets of dew on the leaf, so I wanted to try to echo that.  I had the branch stamped, still visible under all the layers, since the Silks are highly translucent, so I thought that might be the key.

I mixed up some of the Emperor Gold Silks paint with DecoArt Liquid Glass in a fine tip applicator bottle and tested out the results on a spare bit of card.  As you can see, there were various mixtures - some with Glossy Accents, some with Wild Honey Distress Reinker, and all sorts.  (If you look closely, you'll see that there was more than one application on the bottles themselves too, but that's the joy of mixed media experimentation.)

I started by following the stamp with the fine tip applicator to create the branches.

And then I added "berries" where each of the flower heads had been, and sometimes several berries all in a cluster.  I'm sure they are also in the recipe for the magic potions!

I'm really happy with the dimension I ended up with, though I wish I'd managed to recapture the most translucent mixture - ah well, maybe next time.

The gold wire continues the look of the vines and branches, swirling up around the necks of the bottles and disappearing inside.

It's the last of my hoard of golden notebook rings, ripped out and preserved from some old reporters' notebooks.  I've only got plain metal and white ones left now...

I added the Remnant Rub-Ons words - can't have a project without words, can I now?

I washed over them with one of the lightest Silks colours so that they would blend into the background.  

A final dusting of Treasure Gold for extra gleam, and we're pretty much done.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing how my magic potion bottles came to life.

As you can see, there's plenty of experimenting, trial and error - it's always the great "what if?" for me... but when the sun finally came out to make those berries gleam, I thought it was worth it!

Thank you so much to Pamellia and the team for inviting me along this month.  I had so much fun with these, and thanks to the moodboard I went in lots of new directions I might otherwise never have travelled.

That's the whole fun of a challenge I suppose!  I hope you like them - it's always great to hear what you think.

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Thanks so much for dropping in today.  I'm in the midst of technical rehearsals leading up to Dress and First Previews, so not much time for anything else at present, hence these Encore posts... but there is something new on the way in just a few days, and there's light at the end of the tunnel coming up at the end of August, so I'll hope to see more of you all soon!  Happy crafting in the meantime.

There's no mistaking what kind of potion I need. Caffeine - for alertness and rejuvenation.

From Madly by Amy Alward