Jewel-Toned Bottles

Happy New Year!  For those of you making resolutions let me recommend those put forth by one of my personal heroes, Jill Conner Browne, also known as the Sweet Potato Queen.  Jill urges people to make resolutions they can succeed at in order to boost their self-esteem.  One of her favorite resolutions is to "Eat More".  Needless to say, and so I won't.

One of my resolutions this year is to create projects with a recycling twist to them.  Another is to use metallic paint, which make projects simply pop.  Prang metallic paints, user friendly and inexpensive, are available online.  I discovered one overstock site that has a set of twelve 16 ounce bottles of Prang metallic for $33.  Explore and see what shiny things you can come up with.

This project is simply torn, used dryer sheets glued to glass or plastic bottles with my favorite adhesive, gloss gel.  Assemble your supplies of glass or plastic bottles, old brushes about 1-inch wide or foam brushes, gloss gel, and used dryer sheets cut or torn into squares that are 2 inches or smaller.

Simply brush gloss gel onto an area of the bottle, apply a piece of dryer sheet and brush a bit more gloss gel on top.  Continue until the entire bottle is covered and has a nice textured look.  I sometimes do two layers or more simply to get more texture, which I like. 

When the bottles are dry, which is generally in a day or so, dab on a few colors of the metallic paint, sticking to basic matches like green and blue or orange and gold.  Of course, gold simply looks great with everything.  Some of the bottles have an added piece of bead trim at the top, stuck on with gloss gel.  When finished, these bottles make lovely vases for artificial flowers or simply as a grouping of glowing bottles.

Happy Creating!    Happy New Year!