Lemons in, lemons out – decorated bottle – step by step.

As mentioned here, in this post I will guide you through process of decorating a glass bottle. You can use it as a bottle for a refreshing summer drink, a decoration in your home or as an unique bottle for your kid. Definitely, drinking from it, he will think how creative and awesome his mum/dad is. ;)

I will deeply appreciate you sharing pictures and purpose of your bottle. :)

Let’s start! :)

Materials:
– glass bottle,
– glass cleaner or alcohol, paper towels,
– primer (the best) or white acrylic paint (cheaper option),
– napkin or paper with a design you wish to decorate the bottle with,
– mod podge,
– acrylic paints matching motif,
– retarded,
– scissors,
– brushes, sponge,
– painting tape,
– acrylic varnish.

Preparing the bottle before background painting:
– clean well the bottle using glass cleaner from any dirt (glue, oil, dust…);
– if you wish to leave some clear space cover that area with painting tape;

– paint the bottle with primer – let it dry (best with a sponge; if needed 2x).
– cut out the motif from napkin/paper and set up the design you want to have;
– glue the design to the bottle surface – let it dry.

Blending the background with the motif:
In order to make the background I have choose color most similar to the background on the napkin. Then I make different hue of that color adding black and white paint. When the colors were ready I have added few drops of liquid retarded. With a sponge I tap the paint onto the bottle – two colors at once give nice blend. When I had difficulties blending the paint with the motif I used small hard brush – I put very little paint on a brush and tap it into the surface.
In order to make the design look more natural I paint with very thin brush some leafs and over-painted some ages of the motif and the letters. When I felt satisfy with the outcome I set it to dry.
At the end  few layers of varnish – remember, each layer must dry for min. 12 hours before putting new.

The bottle in the pictures above are without varnish where the blending/shading is more visible.

Hope you enjoyed! Any questions? ;)

Photo: AnnaDecou.

Tags: background shading, decoupage, glass, retarded, shading