Bilge Water Bottle

This is a fairly simple bottle that I decorated.  I used a bottle, paint, dirt (yes, what you find in your garden), and some letter stickers to create this container which will hold whiskey at this year's Halloween party.  It's a 32oz Mississippi Mud Black & Tan beer bottle.  


First, I masked off the top section of the bottle.  Then, I applied letter stickers.  The goal was to use the stickers on the glass to mask off the letters, rather than keep them applied to the bottle.  The plan was to paint over these and then remove them to reveal the color and texture of the bottle.  The stickers I found were a perfect font so it didn't matter that they were glittery pink.  I used some of the leftovers to frame the label.  Once the letters were on, I coated it with a few layers of matte finish clear spray paint.  The paint sticks to the glass and, once dry, creates a "tooth" for acrylic paints.  It also seals any of the gaps between the stickers and the glass to prevent colored paint from bleeding under the stickers.  

Once this layer of paint was dry, I dabbed a few layers of beige acrylic craft paint over it.  When that was dry, I took it outside to a planter of beautiful dirt.  To create a textured, aged surface, I layered paint and dirt.  I sprayed sections of the bottle with the clear paint, tossed on some dirt, brushed off the excess and repeated until I had covered the whole bottle with uneven filth.  I sealed the top with clear polyurethane.

Finally, I used tiny sharp tweezers to pull off the stickers and reveal the label.