Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Bloody Labels

One of the coolest Halloween projects you can do is make faux labels for empty bottles. Fot this project I took several glass bottles. I had been saving them over the course of the year. Whenever we would finish a jar of peanut butter or splurged on a bottle of Italian Soda from Target (yum!) I rinsed out the bottle and cap with very hot water and stored it in the laundry room. Over the course of a year you would be suprised how many bottles you end up using. Some bottles are embossed with company logos. For this project I couldn't use them, so into the recycle bin they went.

I decided to use one of the Italian Soda bottles. They look nice and are quite large. Thh next step was to come up with a design for a label. If you are not feeling creative, then you can go to the intertubes and find some really nice pre-made labels (I believe Love Manor has a Flickr set with some really great ones) otherwise you can use a computer and a laser printer.

I say use a laser printer for a good reason. After I print my label I age it in a tea bath. The inks on an inkjet printer are not indelible and will run if placed in water. You can always print out your label and then copy it on a standard photocopier. Usually those are toner based and will make text that is generally resistant to water.

Regardless, I decided to make my own lables. Once again, inspiration can be found on the intertubes. I am not sure what channel, but you can always check the guide. I wanted to make a bottle of Vampire Blood. Now, you might say that vampires don't really have blood and that they "borrow" blood from others. I would tend to agree. In the pantheon of vampire lore it dosen't make much sense, but I am the one making the stupid bottle. You can make a bottle of Victim's Blood if you want.



I printed out the labels and separated them from the page. I wasn't sure what look I wanted, so I printed a few to see what would happen. I cut several, ripped several with a strait edge, and then ripped several with abandon. I like the ones ripped with abandon, but at this point, I was keeping an open mind. You may have noticed the large dots on the label above. I wanted to simulate paper with some mold spots. I had a brown Crayola Magic Marker and I used it to make some random dots. I let the pen really soak the paper because I knew that I was going to keep the labels in the tea bath for a while and I didn't want the dots to disappear.



After Betsy's aproval I prepared the tea bath. I used loose leaf tea from a really great tea shop in Portland, OR. You can use any tea, but good old English Breakfast is the best. English Breakfast is black and tannin-filled, plus it smells delicious. I've used Twinings and it works very well. I brewed the tea in a pot and let it sit 10 minutes (with a cozy of course! What am I...a farmer?) I poured it into the pan with the labels. After letting the pan of tea and lables sit for a good 30 minutes, I fished out the labels and this is what I found...



Goody! Wet paper! Maren would be so excited. Let them dry and this is what is made...



Don't they look old and spooky! They darken considerably after air drying. I took my favorite and adheared it to a bottle filled with a suspicious red liquid. Could it be blood? I brushed some glue mixed with water on the face of the label to make sure it wrinkled nicely.



In general I am quite happy with it. I am going to do some more distressing to make the whole thing appear ancient, but that is for another time.

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