Thursday, December 05, 2013

Be Brave ~ Altered Bottle


Hello everyone. It's time for a new challenge at eclectic Paperie hosted by the very talented and lovely Sue Carrington. The Get Altered Challenge is an opportunity to explore your creative journey, step outside of your comfort zone, to experiment with new products and create altered and mixed media art. By linking up your creation to the eP blog, you earn the chance to win a $15 gift certificate to the eclectic Paperie shop. The theme that Sue has chosen for this challenge is to alter a bottle...any kind, any way.


I started with a pretty little purple bottle that my niece gave me several years ago. It's under 5" tall and has the prettiest heart shape as the bottle part. I began the altering by wrapping a torn strip of unbleached muslin fabric around the neck. I then took a length of tissue wrap, tore it into a strip and twisted it to make it narrow. Silver jewellery wire was wrapped around the twisted tissue and then the wire was wrapped several more times around the neck crisscrossing over itself. Another length of wire had 6 clear and 1 pink Swarovski crystal beads fed onto it before being placed around the bottle neck. A length of antique crocheted lace was placed into the bottle opening so that the four points draped onto the bottle and the rest formed a nest. The little bird is an A Day For Daisies image printed on white cardstock, coloured with Distress markers (Spun Sugar and Worn Lipstick), and fussy cut. A tiny black half pearl accented the eye. He is glued to the lace at the bottom edge and the top and sides of the bird are outlined with Black Big Brush pen.


The middle of the bottle was embellished with several layers.Two torn scraps of pink dotty paper were edged with Vintage Photo Distress ink and glued under a torn piece of French book text aged with Vintage Photo Distress ink. A burlap tag from Little Yellow Bicycle was cut into a fishtail banner and stamped with a message from Unity's Empowered Words set by Donna Downey. Vintage Photo Distress ink grunged up the edges before splatter dots were stamped onto it using Coffee Archival ink. A butterfly from Petaloo was adhered to the banner and three vintage buttons from my collection were threaded with ecru embroidery floss and glued onto the layers. The final touch was to colour a Blossom Bucket heart with a pink Copic marker, wrap it with silver wire, and adhere it to the lower part of the collage.

I liked the bottle before but I really love it now. Why don't you try your hand at altering a bottle and link up to the challenge at eclectic Paperie. If you head over to the eP blog, you will see Sue's amazing creation... well worth the click! The fabulous responses of the rest of the DT will be found in the links below Sue's post as they are entered. I'm excited to see what everyone creates.

Thanks for visiting today.

Life is good; so is art...and altered bottles :)
Bonnie

Here are links to the eclectic Paperie store for the products used in this project:

2 comments:

Sue Lelli said...

Bonnie, LOVE how you altered this bottle! The songbird, the butterfly, the heart, EVERYTHING!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful bottle Bonnie ! Love the shape and the little bird too ! Sue C x