WOYWW #508: Altered Bottle

Has it really been three weeks since I last blogged? I honestly thought it was only two. The fact that the sequence of WOYWW has jumped to #508 tells me that three weeks have indeed passed without me even noticing!

I'm back today with an altered bottle. I had an uncontrollable urge to alter a bottle last weekend, so I went ahead without a plan or even a firm idea. The problem with that is that mistakes invariably happen, but it's all part of the learning process. The mistake I made - and not for the first time! - was thinking that I can attach flat metal embellishments (filigrees) to the curved surface of the bottle. Nope, yet again I had to accept that this is not possible, even if I shape the embellishments to follow the curve of the bottle - so I had to abandon that idea. Of course, by that time my perfectly gessoed surface was all messed up, so I had to cover it up somehow. Enter cheese cloth - the perfect solution to hide the mess under!

Here's a photo I took during the process. A small champagne bottle, first black gessoed, then decorated with cheese cloth and lace ribbons, painted with turquoise blue and green acrylics for a patina look.

After this, I dripped some sepia ink all over the bottle to make it more weathered-looking and added some pre-made embellishments that were lying around my desk. They were meant for a tag, which never really materialized, so I just used them on my bottle. This is what I ended up with:

I originally made the embellishments for the Tim Holtz Addicts Facebook group  #THA_Feb challenge, which revisits the 12-tag techniques. The technique for February is paint resist and the creation doesn't have to be a tag - it can be anything as long as the focal point or the majority of the products used are by Tim Holtz.

I used the TH tattered butterfly bigz die and the bingo embossing folder. The script on the butterfly was stamped with white gesso and dunked into diluted distress ink (faded jeans and vintage photo) to achieve the resist effect. It worked remarkably well! The effect on the embossed piece was achieved by rolling white gesso with a brayer over the raised areas and then dunking the paper into the same distress ink mixture. It got a bit soggy but dried nicely. 

After I'd finished this project, I came to the realisation that right in the middle there's a big fat, round number of significance: my birthday coming up next week, eeks! How did that happen? I still remember being a teenager like it was yesterday! 

In other news: we visited this charming, little, quintessentially English church nearby and I was quite taken with its tranquil setting and a colourful coat of arms inside that really reminded me of mixed media arts! 

Just one more picture if you have a minute to spare: here's Oreo sporting a mono-brow again. Since I took this photo, it has fallen out as well, so he is now browless for the time being - he does have lots of fine black eyebrow whiskers, but they're not so prominent. It will take a few weeks for the two white ones to grow back - hopefully at the same time! 

Happy Wednesday Everyone! Hope you have a good week! xx