Artful Treasures: Upcycling Glass Bottles Into Collectible Artworks Full of Ornate Elegance

1. WELCOME: Hi, and welcome. I'm Jay Johnson, and I'm so excited to share this class with you. Today we're going to take something ordinary, a glass bottle and transform it into what I like to call an artful treasure. These bottles are usually overlooked or discarded after a single use, and we're giving them a new life. We're combining decoupage and sculpted clay details, paint, ribbon, and jewelry elements to create something one of a kind, a truly collectible piece that's full of texture, personality, and presents. What's wonderful about this process is it's not just about decoration. It's about seeing potential in something ordinary, designing with intention and creating a small sculptural artwork that can live on a shelf, a table, or even become a cherished gift. Every bottles, different shapes, surfaces, curves, which means every piece you create will be unique. That's the magic of these artful treasures. You're not just crafting, you're creating something that's personal, artistic and collectible. In this class, I'll walk you through my step by step process, including my mistakes and how I fix them. By the end, you'll have a finished piece that's elegant, ornate, and entirely your own. Let's get started. 2. CLASS PROJECT: All right. Now that we've talked a little bit about what artful treasures are, let's talk about your project for this class. You'll be creating your very own artful treasure, a glass bottle transformed into a sculptural, collectible artwork. We'll combine decapage sculpted clay details, paint, a decorative topper, ribbon, and some jewelry or vintage embellishments to make something uniquely yours. I want this project to be inspiring but flexible. Use a bottle you have on hand, or even another type of glass object you may have like a vase, choose art, textures and colors that speak to you. You can make it ornate, subtle, whimsical, or elegant. The goal is for it to feel personal and collectible for you. On my bottle, I decoupage a small art design on one side. Added the sculpted clay details around it, and then another sculpted clay detail on the back. And I'll finish with a beautiful vintage knob and embellishments. But you might decide to add clay details across the whole bottle or focus more on deca page and paint and skip the sculptural aspect. It's up to you. Every bottle is different, and that's what makes it special. As you create, think about balance and placement, front and back views, how embellishments interact with your chosen art, texture, height, and curves. By the end of this class, you'll have a finished artful treasure, a small sculptural artwork that's uniquely yours and ready to display gift or even start a collection yourself. So gather your bottle, think about your design, and get ready to transform something ordinary into something extraordinary. 3. SUPPLIES: Okay, let's talk about supplies that you will need to make an artful treasure, like what I'm going to make in this class. The very first thing you will need is a glass bottle because I'm making an art bottle in this class. This is one of the artful treasures I make is I take old bottles and turn them into artistic treasures. Some people call them altered art bottles. But I just call them treasures because they're very ornate when they're done, they're they're the ones I do are not always specifically centered around art. They might be just sculptural or home decor. They're all just treasures. But where do you find bottles? This particular bottle, which I'm going to do for this class, it's a very simple bottle. It was found at the Goodwill store. This one my husband found on Ebay and it's a pretty bottle and I do have a booth at my local antique mall, so I might just sell this bottle as is at the booth because I know there are people that collect these and it does have the labels on it. If you decide to use a bottle with labels like this, you'll have to get all those labels off. So I'm not going to use this bottle, but I just wanted to show it to you. It's, you know, if you have old bottles laying around or you know somebody that does, you might want to grab them from them. Here's another bottle, great big bottle that I got at the Goodwill store, and what I look for in the bottles do when I'm going to put art on them, which I am in this class, I'm going to do art on one side and sculpture on the other side. Sometimes I make a bottle just art, sometimes I make a bottle just sculptural, and in some cases, I like to do both. So I'm going to do both. One side will be the art, the other side will be sculptural. So I look for a flat surface that the art can go on. Like even this bottle, it's taller, it's bigger, it's longer. It has flat surface on all four sides. I could technically, if I wanted to easily put some art on all four sides of this great big bottle. But I'm not going to use that bottle either because it would take too long. And my classes already go way longer than most people like. So this is the bottle I'm going to use that I picked up at the Goodwill store. And before I get into supplies, I want to tell you that the very first thing you need to do you've had your fingers all over this bottle is get some alcohol and a paper towel. And I like to use Viva, paper towels or shop towels. They're thicker and softer than a lot of paper towels out there. And I just put a little alcohol on here and try not to spill it and then wipe down the bottle really good. And, of course, if there was a label on here, which there is not, in this case, if there was a label on here, I would probably soak it, get the label off, use some gugon or something like that to get the label off. But I just like to clean it off a little bit. And that's my alcohol top. I was gonna put that on the bottle. I'm going to put that aside and put the bottle aside for right now. And the paper towels. While I talk about the rest of these supplies. The very first thing I do before deciding what I'm going to do with a bottle is decide whether I'm going to use art on it. And in this case, I am. And this is an image that I created, and I have sized it three ways on this paper. I have measured the bottle. I'm trying not to touch the surface to see which one of these sizes would go best on the front? That one there will fit just fine. This one's a little big, but it could fit as well. So one of those I will use of this image. So when I go to picking out a top for my bottle, and my paint colors. I like to if I'm going to put art, I choose the paint first. I mean, I choose the art first and then choose the paints. If I'm going to do a sculptural bottle, I'll pick whichever mold I want to use to sculpt something from my air dry clay, and I will just pick what elements I want to mold to put on the bottle, and then I'll pick the paint colors I want to use. But when it involves art, I like to pick the art and then pick a topper. Now, here's some things I like to use for toppers. These are vintage door knobs that I picked up recently. Aren't they pretty? They're old. They can be a great topper. They're a little big for this bottle, though. I'm gonna have to keep handling the bottle to show you. I mean, they will fit, but they kind of overpower that bottle. So that would be for a bigger bottle. I have these cabinet knobs from Hobby Lobby. There's a nice, sweet crystal cabinet knob that would work very well as a topper. So that's a possibility with that design. And here I have this cabinet knob, which happens to have the colors that are in my design. So this is a really good possibility. I need to take my price tags off, but see, that will fit nicely on top of that bottle, as well. And then I have a darker one. If I was going to use dark pink colors, I might go with this one. But I'm planning on going with the later pink colors. And really for this design with the horse, I really think this one works perfect. It actually matches perfect. So that's the cabinet knob I'm going to use. You can use a wide variety of things for toppers. You can use finials, you can use door knobs, cabinet knobs, anything that will fit on your top and not overpower your bottle. If you want the topper to overpower your bottle and that to be the main focus, then obviously you might go with a really large finial or something like that. It's totally up to you. What I'm showing you is what I use and what I'm using for this design I'm working on. You obviously will pick your own art, pick your own designs, pick your own accessories for your bottle. So that's the knob I'm going to use. Let me put the bottle aside and the knobs. Okay. And let's talk about the art. I just printed this on regular copy paper. And like I said, I resized it a couple of different sizes. I may do this bottle with one and I have some smaller bottles. I may do another one of these on a smaller bottle. I print this out and I have crylon matte finish spray. I take it outside. I weigh it down on the corners, and I spray it with this. I spray it once, wait a few minutes, and then spray it again. Because this is printed on ink printer, that helps to seal the ink. So that it won't run. Now, I have done many projects like this where I have not sealed the paper, and it's been fine because I use mod pod as my the matte finish one to apply, and it dries very fast, and I don't overwork it with the brush. So it's up to you if you want to seal it or not, but this is just printed on regular copy paper. I have printed before on tissue paper, but on these bottles, you can do it either way. So that is the art, and that's how I prepare that. Now, let's talk about the rest of the supplies. For my molds, I have a variety of molds. Grab a cup here. I have molds. Like this. This one was purchased at Michael's. This is a trim mold. This one works really good. It is a silicone mold, so it is very flexible. These work very well. I ordered these off of Walmart. These are much cheaper, but they're very, very loose and flimsy. They're more difficult to work with. So I'm not going to use these today, but I will say when I do use these type of molds like this that are very, very flimsy and I have difficulty with the fine details in them, I will after I put the clay in the mold, I will put them in the freezer for about 20 minutes and then get them out and they'll come out just perfectly then. But they are a little more difficult to work with. It's kind of one of those things you get what you pay for. This is one of the IOD molds. IOD is ron orchid designs. They make these great molds. They're expensive. You can get them on sale sometimes if you're lucky, but they're expensive, but they're worth every penny. Worth every penny. I think this one was $26 or $28 for this one when I bought it. They have a little rim around the edge, which is specific to this company. It makes it very easy to mold the clay and to get your clay out. And as far as the like this one here from Michael's is a little firmer than this one. So I find it sometimes a little more difficult to get it out of this because it's a little too firm. This is just right, and these are super, super flexible. Sometimes super flexible just isn't as good. But, you know, if you have molds, you don't even have to have molds. You could flatten out your clay using a roller, apply a stamp to it to create a pattern and then maybe cut it out with a cookie cutter shape or something. If you wanted to apply an element on there and you did not have a mold. But I highly recommend the molds and you'll see why, by the time we get done, they really make a great difference in making the most ornate pieces that I like 'cause I'm going for ornate and lots of elements involved that make it just super, super pretty. And so I like this mold, and I have a little jar here with cornstarch in it and a little fan brush that I will apply cornstarch into the mold when it's time to do that. So that's another supply that helps your clay come out of your mold a little better as if you apply some cornstarch in it first. The clay I use is the DOS brand. It's just the plain white, but they have it in a lot of colors. It doesn't really matter because I'm gonna paint it. But I just I like the white. It looks kind of gray when it's wet in the package, but then when it dries, it dries white. So that's the brand of clay I like to use for air dry clay. And we put these aside. Let's talk about these other supplies. For decoupage decoupaging art on the bottle, Mod Podge for gluing the clay elements after they're molded onto the bottle, tight bond, quick and thick, multi surface glue, available most anywhere. So is mod podge. And I use the matte finish. For paints, I do use acrylics sometimes. I have a whole range of them because I do paintings. And I'm a professional artist, I've been painting for years. And so I do have tons of acrylics that I like, but I also like chalk paints. And I've used these two just recently in another piece, and they go with my horse. And I may pull in to add a little bit of darkness this, but I may not. This was hobby lobby, and this one is cottage white, and this one is French linen. They're both really pretty. I'm creating a sort of a theme right now with several done in the same colors to create a certain look for my local booth. For gold paint, this deco art brand is one of my favorites. They have various metallic colors. This one happens to be called vintage brass. And that's the one I've been using lately. So I like that one. To glaze, I have this valve spar antiquing glaze that I had. I'm trying to use up supplies I have here. This is something I've had for a while. This is a new bottle that was just opened recently. It's just a brown antiquing glaze that you put on and you wipe back off. A lot of people use a wax. That is also if you have a wax, a brown wax, that would work as well. Or any other brand of antiquing glaze. You don't have to use the same brands. I'm using the folk art chalk and the Deco art gold. You use whatever you have that suits you. Obviously some water. I like a spray bottle in case I need it, scissors to cut out my art, a variety of brushes. These, I like these little pounce brushes for working with the chalk paint, and these bigger, softer brushes for other things I might do and some little smaller brushes, and another one that really works to get this one I use for the glaze to get that glaze down in the design. So all of that, if you have a palette knife to get the clay in the mold properly and get off the excess outside of your mold, palette knife is useful. Any knife will work a regular butter knife. This happens to be an old letter opener that belonged to my husband. And so it works perfect. I like this a little better than using my palette knife because I tend to go too hard when scraping the clay off and sometimes I dig into the design, and this is a little thicker, so it keeps me from digging into the design too much. So anything that you can use to do that with, let's see what else. Obviously, rags, wipes. If you have any wipes, like baby wipes or whatever, these are equate fragrance free Walmart wipes I use to clean things up. I have to have things that don't have a lot of smell because I'm very sensitive to smells. Then for sealing, after finishing everything, the matte finish is really good. If you do want a glossy finish, this one is a real good one. Triple thick, crystal clear glaze. It will put a shine on stuff. I don't particularly like my bottles to be shiny. I like my elements I add to my bottles like my jewels at the end. And you don't see my ribbon or my jewels out here yet for this project. But I do use some ribbon to finish it off and some jewelry chain and some vintage jewels and beads and things like that. That is just an extra thing that you can do to make your project even prettier. And I don't pick those until after I have finished the main bottle and have the topper on. That's when I pick those because colors may shift during the work and what you know, I may end up going darker with the pink color or something like that. And if I do that, I don't want to have picked beads and jewels that might not go with the final product. So I always pick my little accents at the end. So they're not out here right now. But I'm telling you, if you have beads and rhinestones and old buttons and old brooches or new ones, you don't have to have old. I just happen to have a lot of vintage parts and pieces, and I have some new beads and new things as well. And so I like to integrate those into my final design as final touches, just to elevate it over the top, because I like my designs to be over the top. So it's a pretty simple process is just kind of time consuming. So that pretty much covers the supplies that I can think of to do what I'm going to do. And in the next video, we'll actually start preparing our bottle. And I'll show you my secret way that I like to prepare a bottle before I do anything else to it. 4. PREPARE THE BOTTLE & ART: Okay, let's talk about the very first thing to do. The very first thing I do to my bottle is take mod podge, the matte finish, my little stomper brush, which I put in the Mj page. I usually just stick it on a paper plate here. And get it really coated good. And then I pick up my bottle and start dabbing this on. Now, macho, mod podge, I'm gonna need more than that is a glue. It's a white glue, and it looks like you're painting your bottle white with this stuff. But you're not. You are preparing the bottle for other paint and other things. I'm going to try to lay this down. And you see that little fun texture it's making? I actually like that. But that texture helps everything grip well. I will soften out some. And I go all the way around one side down to the bottom edge. Tapping any areas that I need to, and I like to set a paper towel here. I'll fix any of it at the end. It's really hard to do this at this angle. But this works really well to prepare that glass surface because paint does not like to stick to glass. There are numerous things you can do to make it stick, and numerous other products you can use. But I'm all about no smell, non toxic. And I already have these paints, and these are the paints that I want to use for my art, and I've stuck it to the bottom of the bottle there, so Oh losing my mod podge there. All right. Get the sides well. I'm trying to not tap it too much on that paper towel. I have a glass palette over here that I will set this on. The glass palette, the stuff will be able to be scraped off later if any gets on the palette. Like from that bottom edge. I just try to make sure it's totally covered. Kind of look at it at an angle. Let's see. Other than the top rim, that is pretty well covered to start with. There's a little section right here that needs a little more. I will get around the rim some, but this will help This will help when attaching other things to it, including paint, everything will stick nicely and I know you can't see. Right now, I'm trying to keep it straight up, so I don't take any of this off. I'm just making sure every spot is covered. See? Now, this will be set aside over here onto my glass palate. And this I will dunk in my water to go ahead and wash that glue off of there. Really, really good. Scrub it down in there. Now, remember I said those wipes I learned along the years with these paints, if you wipe off around the rim, where you got it all goopy with a wipe, it will help your bottle open better the next time, which I do have trouble opening this one because I didn't do that. But see that took very little effort. It won't take that long to dry, but you need to wait until it's totally dry before going on to the next step. So the next step would be deciding which size of the arch to use and in looking at it, I really think I think the smaller horse smaller ones might get a little they look fine on this bottle, but they might get a little loss. And with this one, I have more edging. I can get rid of that and blend that in with paint. So I think I'm going to go with the bigger one. So I'm gonna go ahead and cut this out. And I'm going to just cut close to the line. And I'm going to put these others aside and just trim this up. But I'm not gonna leave this straight. There we go. My you you don't have to do bottles. Let's say you don't have a bottle. Let's say, like, for instance, in my dining room in there, there's an old clear glass vase that had some flowers in it at one time. It's just sitting there. I haven't done anything with it in years. And if I wanted to decorate something up and turn it into an artful treasure, I could actually use that vase if I didn't have any bottles. You don't have to do bottles. This process more on anything. And I'm specifically working with a lot of glass things right now because in the picture I showed you, there is a lot of glass out there that is basically just tossed away. And I believe in upcycling, I don't like to just throw good things away that can be a base for something else. So I haven't thrown my base away, and it's there in case I want to use it, and I probably will at some point when I run out of models. Alright. So I have torn I mean, cut this guy out. And now, what I'm going to do because I do not like to mount this with a hard edge. It will not do well. But what I love to do is get a brush, just a small brush. I don't need one really big. Dip it in this water over here. Get it a little wet. And I like to go around the edges like this with the water. I don't need a lot. I was going to let that soak a little bit on that side. And I'm kind of going around in a in a sort of a circle pulling off those corners with this water and down the very edge. Now, what this does is it softens that edge so you can tear it. And notice how when it gets wet, it's changing that color a little bit. But now that that is wet, my goal is to go along where I wet it and tear it. And I like to tear towards me. My need to soak in a little more, or I could have gone a little stronger with the water there, I think. I need some more water there. Come in a little bit closer. But the torn edges, if you do a torn edge, it will blend in better when you go to paint around it. So, I like to go ahead and get this part done, and I like to tear towards me rather than away because that just reveals that nice torn edge. Now there it's a little dry. I didn't get enough water on there, so you can hear it kind of crunching. That's okay. You can tear it when it's dry, too. It just feathers out a little better when it's wet. And it tears so much easier when it's wet. I don't like that little bit right there. Probably just need to wet that so I can tear that a little bit better in a minute. Let me get this. See how much easier when it soaks in. It just comes right off. I'm trying to stick with where I put the water, and it just pulls right apart. And the uneven edges, though, will make it. Now there's a little dry. I need some more water there. Pull that off. And this little spot right there I don't like. And didn't I put some down here? I did. It's better if you let it soak in a little bit longer than that. And you can actually pull it away like this to get that feathered edge going. This was the spot. I added more water right here, and I'm just gonna pull that all the way around. So now we've got a nice torn edge. It's still too big for my bottle, though. But that's okay, because we can wrap around the edges a little bit. Let's see. Yeah, it's way too big. I need to come in a little bit more. I don't want it to be quite that big. You can go around the edges some. I'm just going to pull even more of this off. It's better to take too little off and have to take some more off than it is to take too much off because once you've taken it off, you can't put it back on. So once I took that off and kind of reviewed it, I see it needs to have a little more come off of there. So let's go along do this again. And I'm kind of tearing and pulling at the same time. I tear it towards me, but then I'll start pulling if I feel it's going to release easy enough like that. That's just peeling right away now. See? Look how nice that's coming off of there. Just pull it away. Yeah, that's a little better. Let's see if we're closer to the size. Much closer. And like I said, I don't mind if it wraps around the edges a little bit or even the bottom down here, a little bit. I could take that off later if I want to. Actually, that is a little deep section right there. I don't think I want that going across the bottom, so we're just going to wet that a little bit more right there and work on tearing and pulling. That might be better now. Let's see. Still too deep down there. Okay. I'm gonna take off that little corner, and I'm gonna come across right here. Alright. There we go. Now it's tearing good. Yeah, I like to pull it if I can. It really does feather it out nicely, which thins those edges a little bit. Now. I think that'll be still got a little deepness down there on the bottom, but I kind of like that, so I'm gonna leave it. So now that is prepared and ready to go. So we will wait for the bottle to fully dry. And then we will apply this to the bottle. And then after that, we will mold some clean. So we just have a little drying time now hang in there. 5. APPLY THE ART: Okay. Our bottle is dry. Now, you'll see some little bubbles in here and you can feel them. If those bug you, you could sand them down a little bit. They don't bug me. I like my glass objects to have some texture. My goal is not to make them appear like glass. It's to make them into a different kind of treasure. And so I don't mind them, but you can sand them down a little bit if you would like. But it's dry, and it's only been about 30, 45 minutes. I will add, do not dry your mod podge with a heat gun. If you dry it with a heat gun and then you apply paint later, it will crack. If you want cracks, that's one way to get them. But I don't want it to crack. I want everything to stick really nicely. So I've got this old blue paint rag out here, nice and soft to lay my bottle on. Let me make sure that we're in camera. There we go. We're in camera. And obviously, we're gonna use the mod podge again. And we're gonna put the image on the bottle. I'm trying to figure out where I want it to go. Now, here is a little tree. Because this is going to wrap around a little bit, there's an edge right there. I'm trying to make it there where it'll end right here at the bottom. Um because there's a curve to this, when you go to mount this art on here, getting it to stay down around that curve or getting it to do properly is going to be difficult. So a little trick, take your scissors and put some slits like this in various areas, I just kind of go all the way around I try not to cut into the subject. Just do little slits, so it will curve fit better around the curve. I'm not worried about cutting into these little imaginary words. I don't want to cut the subject too much, but it won't hurt it. Where's that other cut? Okay, right there. So now I've cut little slits in it. So when it comes time to mount this, it will go down and one section may end up covering a little bit of another, but it'll help it lay down better. So the first step is to put the mod pod on the bottom. And then put this down and then put the mod podge over top. I like to use this big brush for this. It does give me the ability to cover a lot of real estate really quick. So once I put it on here and lay this down where I want it to go, I will then put some in the middle and push out like this, and I'll keep doing that until it stays down. If I need to take some more of this off, I will. But I'm just trying to make sure there's a little bit of area right here. I want to make sure the horse is going to fit where I want him to fit. I want him centered, kind of. It's hard to center them. Exactly. I want this bottom torn edge to be about right there. So that's about where I need him to be, but I can move it. And what I like to do to be able to move it a little easier is spray the back a little bit with some water. But first, I want to put some mod podge on there. So let's get that done first. I've got my little plate here. I've got some actually left on the plate. If it's still wet, I can go ahead and use that. I don't like to waste anything. And just really coat it really good. And I'm going to have to get a little more out of the bottle. I do like to go a little higher and, of course, over those edges because it is going to wrap around those edges. So I want it to have enough there where it can stick good. Like so. Like that. Let me set that down. Now, I'm gonna spray the back of the image with a little water just to make it move a little better. And of course, it wants to curl up. And I'm going to try to line it up. I may have to pick this up a little to look at it. But that actually line up pretty good. And yeah, it sliding a little bit. You can move it a little bit better once you've sprayed it with water. I'm just going to tap all this down the best I could as it's dry, like so, and then I will go over the top of it. And remember that wipe I said? It's good to have. It's good to wipe this stuff off your fingers. Alright, now I'm going to get a good amount on the brush, and I'm going to put some in the middle and start pushing outward. I don't want it to drag, so I want to make sure there's a good amount on the brush before I do that. You don't want to dry brush, it'll drag. And I got a little piece sticking up right there. So I'm pressing really hard, and some of this will move. You can see I've got a little piece here that's kind of moved. So I pull that back down with my fingernail and go the other way on moving it. Try to get it where it's not going to pull up, but I want to make sure it's pretty flat and very well covered. Now this will dry clear. Oops. I'm going to get some off the bottom edge so it won't stick to my palette. Now, see, that will dry nice and clear and we'll seal that image in. We've got a few wrinkles there. You can push them out with your finger. It's coated, so it should be okay. Not any dry spots on there. So it's coated really well, as you can tell from the shininess of it. And this is white, but it will dry clear. And I'm going to set this over here. And I'm gonna rinse off the brush immediately. I scrub it. I have a grate in my water bucket, and I scrub it on that grate to get that any glue in between those bristles loosened up 'cause I use this brush for painting, too. But if you clean your brushes right away, if you clean them off right away, they won't get stiff and disgusting. So that's enough of that right now. And I want to mention something else. Let me get the bottle back over here. You see this rim here at the top? Now, when the cabinet knob is placed on the top, it will sit right there where my fingers are, but you see that little ridge, that will be covered up with some ribbon later on. This section here though, I do like to do a wrap around clay piece for that top section there. I'm going to pull back out one of my molds here. I have a few trim molds from IOD, and I try to make sure that if I pick one of these, it's going to fit nicely. Obviously, this one's too big. But I'll pull the bottle back over and actually look at what size might go. I actually like this one here. In the middle, it's not too wide, but it does have this nice little border edge. Let's see here. These are too wide. This one here may work, and I can actually come down under this lip with some of this possibly. Or I may trim some of that off. I may mold just this middle section and not out here. But that's the one because it's leaves. It's flowing and it's leaves and I don't want anything really super ornate. I may use that one. Then the other one is that I had picked out is this one for the back. I need to decide what kind of element I want on the back and I also need to decide if I want any elements around these corners. And these corner elements right here work very well. This one here, these are a little bit too much for this bottle because it's a medium sized bottle. It's not a small bottle, it's not a huge bottle. But these may be a little too much. And, of course, you don't have to use your mold the entire way it is shown. You can cut it and use a part of it. And if I was to mold this really long one here, I could cut it in the middle and I could use a part here, and then this part here at the top. But I also have to keep in mind what I'm going to do at the top up here. And so if I do that and I use these, it may be a little much. Actually, any mold around the image might be a little much with using one here. I don't know. It may work. It may work to do that long one and split it up. Maybe. And let's see. My biggest thing that takes up time is decision making. I do like this ornamental piece right here for the back of the bottle to create a sculptural effect. I'm just not sure if this is going to be too wide on this one. It probably won't I mean, I can mold it and if I don't use that, I can ball it back up and put it back in the package. So I'm thinking this trim for around the top, at least part of it. This long one here divided in two with a part being on the bottom, right corner of the horse and a top curving across the top left corner. And then this one for the the sculptural effect on the back. I don't want to do too much sculptural effect on this bottle because of the art. I don't want to overwhelm the art. I want to complement the art. Now, when I do a bottle that's all sculpture, I will use the sculptural elements quite a bit. I have some cross molds that I use to do what I call prayer bottles. And so I'll put a cross on them and use a bunch of other elements. But for this one, I do think this would work nicely in the center on the back. This one divided maybe around the horse, and this one as the trim possibly around the top edge of the bottle. So that's the plan on the molding. And we will do that in the next step. We will do that. 6. MOLD & APPLY CLAY: Alright, we're ready to make some clay mold in these molds. Now, I am gonna get another Oops. I'm gonna get another wipe out here to be able to wipe my hands and wipe other stuff. I keep my clay in a plastic bag. I fold it close, tape it up, keep it from drying out. Then the very first thing I'm going to do is put some cornstarch in the molds that I've decided to use. So I just dip the fan brush in, tap it off, and just start dusting the mold. Like so. It'll help it release better if you do this. I'm not used any other kinds of powder. Just the cornstarch is what I use. I don't know if other people use other things or not, but the goal is just to get it to release better out of the mold when you're done. And you'll see how wonderful these molds are. And I held off on buying these because of the cost buying this brand. But now I know after getting a few of them, now I know it's like everything else, you get what you pay for. If it's expensive, it's probably pretty good quality. That's not saying others aren't, but they do. You know, I'm trying to work with what's easiest. Where I don't have to fight with it as much. So let's get a little clay out. Can you see that? Let me see. Yeah, you can see that. And this clay is really fun. And I used to use polymer clay in the old days when I was doing polymer clay work, jewelry design work, which I did for years, and believe it or not, the polymer clay made me sick and I couldn't figure out why. It wasn't until years later when I got diagnosed with Alpha gal that I discovered that the polymer clay brand I was using had animal ingredients in it, which if you know anything about Alpha gal, it's from a tick bite and you cannot have anything with animal ingredients in your life. So that's why it was making me sick. I knew it was non toxic, so I thought I was safe, but I wasn't safe because of my own Alpha Gal syndrome. Okay, I've kind of conditioned this and rolled this into a little ball. And what I like to do is take little pieces of it and then push it into the mold and kind of work it down in there. And if your hand gets too sticky, you can dip it in the water. Dip your fingers in the water a little bit. And I just keep pushing it in that mold, and these rims on this particular brand, they really make it a lot easier to get things in there where they're supposed to go. They also help you clean it up good afterwards. So you can have your detail like it's supposed to be because that edge that raised edge they have on these molds really makes a difference on finding out where you should be in your mold. It looks like I need a little bit more right there. Normally, I'd have this right up underneath me 'cause my eyesight is not the best. And I just put those extra little bits on there. And I like to work in the smaller pieces rather than one big large chunk because then I can kind of not have to do as much trimming later. If it extends way out over here, it ends up in the other mold and I like to stay as close to the edges as I can and work it in there. You have a few minutes of time here to work with this. Pretty good amount of time because this clay, the DOS clay DOS, it won't cure until overnight. So what I'm doing now is the final step, other than attaching these to the bottle is the final step I will do today. Because once I've attached this to the bottle, it has to cure overnight. 24 hours, they say, is best. I try to scoop the extra out and get it level in the mold. But it does take the 24 hours or at least overnight. It doesn't have to be 24 hours exactly. I go move this one out of the way for right now so I can turn this a little bit and make sure that I'm where I'm supposed to be here. See how when I push down there, it forms right there in that middle. That middle section is not part of the mold, but those edges help me see what is part of the mold. And sometimes I can pull that excess off. I just try to get it as flat as possible and to make sure each little detail area is covered. Um I'm gonna move my bottle out of the way a little bit. Where is my letter opener? This is what I like to use. I don't like to start when I try to scrape off to get the excess off. I don't like to start at the tip. I like to start somewhere in the middle from each direction and just pull towards me. See how that trim that up real nice and then I'll have that extra piece, and then I'll turn it this way and do the same thing. But the letter opener does not dig as much as my palette knife does. And I'll just make sure, again, and smooth it a little bit more before I pop this out. And I like to do one at a time. Now, if you have trouble with the mold, like I said, you can take it as it is in the mold and put it in the freezer for about 20 minutes. Don't leave it longer than that. You don't want it to freeze freeze. But when you get it out, it'll pop right out, and then it starts thawing and you have time to work with it. So now to get it out, I probably should have dusted some of the extra cornstarch out, but I didn't it over and just start. I lay it down flat. And try to pull from the end and peel it back. And I push down here while I'm pulling, and you'll get the hang of this as you figure out the molds and work with them, and I got to figure out where I'm at on the mold here. There we go, because it extends this way. But I push here and pull from the outside area. That did pretty good. Got a few little pieces left, but I'll get rid of those. I do take my molds and wash them. Afterwards, now have this nice long mold here and I'm just gonna set this off to the side and let that sit there a minute. While I do this other one here, this one. I'm gonna use that same clay. I just pulled off on excess, but I do wash these out right away. And the reason I do that is because I don't want the clay drying in there and causing a problem and being there for the next impression of the next one I do. So soon as I'm done here with this process, I will take these and wash them out. So once again, smaller amounts to push in there to start with. This one here will be the one that will go on the back. Now I can use a bigger amount in the middle on this because I have more real estate there to work with. Push it down all the way in there. And if it starts sticking to your fingers and pulling back up, you can dampen your fingers a little bit, or you can put some cornstarch on them. This air dry clay, though, is pretty easy to work with. Get another little piece here for this section. I don't know how much I'll need. That's probably enough right there. Yeah. Make sure that's pushed down real good. And you can if you have your little exacto knife, you can do any trimming you might need to do later. I'm gonna pull from this side first. Get that excess off. On this side. See, the letter opener is great for this. I hadn't used it for opening letters in years. But it was in here in my studio. And I thought, Well, that may work, but it skims right across those edges. You get the extra little bits out. If you can, you can also use another one to pick some up and then smooth it out a little with your finger. Make sure it is inside all the edges before you pull the mold. And then, same thing, put it down and peel back. And this go as slow as you need to go. If you try to go too fast, it may break. Look at there. That'll be beautiful. And if any of this does break off, when you go to attach it to the bottle, it will be easily, you know, placed with your glue back together. Alright, let's try to do this strip to go around that top of the bottle. I probably should have got that extra. Cornstarch out. Let's see here. Now, the neat thing about their trims is they're meant to go to connect to one another. So if you're doing a longer trim somewhere and you need to connect two pieces together, you see the way this is? That's really neat. I haven't had to utilize that yet, but I do have a couple of frames I'm working on next. So with frames, I may end up needing that to do a border around a frame. Uh, and see I pulled it out. Pulled too hard. It stuck to my finger. I'm fingers are covered with the clay too much and not moist enough to stick into them. I probably ought to wipe some of that off. And dry. Okay. Now, let's try. And you could do a long snake like piece with this and roll it in here, which might be a good idea to get this done a little faster. Like this and push it in It's still trying to stick to my fingers, some. You can tell when it pulls back up, it's doing that. Oops, your hands get kind of dry with that cornstarch on there. On the trims, it may be a little bit more beneficial to try to get a little extra in there. Just to make sure you've got it in there, good. It's trying to pull up. You can use a wipe and kind of dampen it a little bit and help you smooth it down. Just want to make sure everything is filled in. I got a lot of excess on this one. That's gonna have to come off. Yeah, 'cause I got too much right here. But I want to make sure it's in that impression really good. Alright, let me try to get some of this off 'cause I got way too much. Well, I dug too much off. So let's put some back in. Now, these wipes that I'm using do not have alcohol, and they are scent free. Alright, let's see. I also use them to clean my letter opener. And I may have to do a little trimming on this one. The faster you go when doing this part, whether it be with a pallet knife or with this, the better it will work. These longer ones are a little bit more tricky. And I probably won't need all this anyway, so I don't know why I'm fooling with it so much. Alright, let's flip it and try to see how easy that came out. Left a little bit in the mold there. Alright. Set that over here. It got kind of a nice little pattern now. Pulling my bottle back over. This is not dry yet. But I do want to start attaching some things here. I do know I'm not going to need all that trim. So we're going to just kind of wrap around here and see what I am going to need. And I'm just going to cut it here and put this back in there with the rest of my clay. So it'll stay damp, smooth this out a little bit. I'm actually going to connect end to end here, so I'm gonna cut off that little piece. And hopefully, I'll have enough to go all the way around. Oh, yeah, I got way more than enough, so I still need to cut off a little bit more. So I'm gonna make a mark right there. If I can see where that was, I think it was right in here. I normally work on my glass palette for this. This just has some little leaf indentions or something. I am going to glue this on right now. This is where the type bond comes in. This stuff does an amazing job of adhering things very quickly. I go all the way around the edges. And do kind of a zig zag a few little marks in the middle and lay this down. And what I'm going to do is spread this out because I don't want the glue really seeping out too much. I can't get ahold of it here to make it hold still. I pull it off the edges there. But that's what the wipes for. If it seeps out, you can wipe some of it back. So I want the seam to be on the back. So I'm just going to pick this up, and I'm going to go around here and connect it. I still need to cut off a little bit more. I want to tap one side in place just gently with my fingers. Yeah, I'm going to need to cut off some more of that. You can cut it when it is on the bottle very carefully. But you do not want to put this piece of clay because it has glue on it, you don't want to put it back in there with the rest of your clay. That one is trash. I try not to throw it on the floor. Where your cat may get it. Alright, now, you see, I've got this all wonky here, so I need to scoot this and scoot it together the best I can. And if you have one of these tools, this is a smaller one here. These are color shapers. Oops. I'm sticking my fingers to the front of the bottle, but they're also great with clay. And they make these fore clay specifically. I'm just going to try to squeeze this together as close as I can. And I'm going to take a little water on my finger, dab it off on the towel and just kind of wet that area a little bit. It helps to smooth that seam together. And when you do that, you'll lose some of the details. And that's where these little color shapers come in handy because you can kind of add some little lines and details back in there kind of crossing over where the seam is. And you can smooth any of those details out with your finger. Or your fingernail. Now I'm going to tap the top edge around very lightly and the bottom edge, and I'm gonna carefully turn it and look at my front, and I know it's hard for you to see. I'm trying not to touch the front, but I'm tapping this bottom section in there tight where that glue will catch around that bottom rim. And it will help it stay adhered better with no gaps. And if you need to readjust something, you can use a clay or a color shaper. These are called color shapers. They have them at Blick. I use them with my pastels to blend. And I also use them with this. Then I have a little glue at this top edge, but I'm not too worried about that because that's going to be covered with a ribbon. But now we have a nice little chunky top around that bottle. Okay. And wipe off your tools where you have that glue on it and clay. Because if you don't, that stuff, especially the glue, will stick there, which is another reason these wipes are really handy to have. And then get the excess clay off your work table. Like so. Now we're ready to glue. Oh, let's do the back the back piece. And I cannot lay that down yet to dry. Um, I'm trying to see if I have a way to kind of h I'm afraid to lay that. We might just have to come back in another segment here. Let me let this dry a little bit more. Just about, you know, 15, 20 minutes more on that front where I decoupage that design so that I can maybe handle it a little bit better. So we're gonna pause this and come back with another segment on the rest of the clay. 7. APPLY CLAY PART 2: Alright, we've dried for a few minutes. I decided to do the front first. I'm gonna lay this because the front still see, now this won't touch. I'm waiting on this to fully dry. But while I'm doing that, I can go ahead and glue these front pieces on because the mod podge is glue, and this is glue. So that one long one here that I did the long mold, which I'm not sure if you can see that on camera. You can kind of see it. I'm going to just cut it in half using my knife. Because if you let the clay dry too long, it'll start to not be maneuverable. Okay, I got this and I got this. So I'm thinking this down here like this. And this one may be like that. What do you think? Oh, maybe you've been scoot it up a little. What do you think? Um, this one may have to go off the edge a little bit. Why not? Alright, let me do this one first. And once again, put the glue on the back of the clay and then rub it all around with your fingers. If you don't want to get your fingers in the glue, you can always wear gloves, but I hate wearing gloves. So fingers in glue, it is. Just like this. The nice thing is this tight bond stuff dries really, really quick. It is wonderful. Okay. Let me wipe my handle as soon as I find what I did with that. G another one of those out. Okay. Flip this back over. Let's see where I want this. I do want it coming up over the top, like that. I think that's really cool. This one is supposed to curve more this way and tap that one down right around the edge. Now, when it comes time to paint these, some of this paint's gonna get on this image, but it's protected with the mod podge. So I'm not worried about that. It will blend in. I will blend it in, and I will have a white pandy to wipe off any paint I need to take right back off. And it will wipe right off because this is now protected. So this one I want to glue right there. So let's get the glue on that one. You can just do little dots with this if you like, so you don't overdo it on the glue. The nice thing is with the mod pod still being a little bit damp, that will help it stick better as well, but it won't go anywhere with this tight bond. I've done several pieces already. Oh, I also wanted to mention another glass choice, if you would like to decorate glass like this, I mentioned vases, but another thing I did not mention was jars. Jars are wonderful, as well. I want to make this one kind of curve off the edge a little and just tap it down and I'm going to kind of lift up my lift up my bottle to see what we're looking like. Oh, that's gonna be pretty. So while this is still wet, I'm going to make some little adjustments here to this little part where I cut it to kind of squeeze that and make it a little thinner and tap everything down all around the edges to make sure everything is connected well. This one I see a gap right there, so we're going to push down on that gap, a little bit. I'm not pushing very hard. I like the little cracks that appear because I'm trying to create an aged look. I really like that. But if you don't like that, you can get a little water on your finger or even a little water on a brush, I'd use a smaller brush than this and you can smooth that out a little bit if you want to. In fact, let me do that just to show you. Just make sure it doesn't have too much water, dab some of the excess water off and just go like this. See how it just makes those cracks sort of disappear. If you've got any extra clay on there, you can get that off. But the brush actually helps to smooth it out if you need to. That's looking pretty good. Tap that down a little more. Blow on it. This part right here is wanting to pop up. But I just spend a couple minutes doing this to make sure it's fully secured. It doesn't really matter if you have a little slight gap because when you paint this, that paint's probably gonna get in there. Here's a little crack right there. Let's see if we can adjust this. Just soften that a little bit. Smooth that out. And even right here. And if you have any excess glue around the edges, you can use your brush to kind of pick that up. We're we're doing pretty good here. And once you've I mean, this hasn't been very long and it's not going anywhere. If I stand this up, it's not gonna slide down the bottle. So now we're gonna do the back piece. And try not to touch that, but I just did. There's a little crack in there, too. I can use the brush to smooth some of that out. There's just a slight leaf pattern in there at the top. It's just enough to add some interest. Tap this down a little more. I do have a little excess glue up there, but that's not gonna matter. And I have I just noticed there's one little crack there that I don't particularly like because it's right on that edge. And when you add a little water to it, it makes it into a slip where it gets kind of liquidy, and it'll have to re dry. It doesn't do that once it's hardened, but only when it's still wet. Excuse me. So Just kind of smooth some of those out. I still make sure we're I keep touching this top one here, and I just dug my finger in there. And this is where a color shaper can come in handy because if you wanted to put some little lines in there, some little marks, I'm just tapping that a little to give it some interest where I smushed it. Like this is a leaf. It should have a little line right here and there a little bit more of an indention there. These are wonderful for moving your clay and adding little marks like that if you make a mistake and smoosh it too much. And you can also use the brush with the water where your seam is on the back here. To really help lend that in. You might not be able to see this, but I can see the seam is softening and disappearing. And if you made too deep a lines, you can smooth them out. It's amazing what you can do with these little tools and clay. I absolutely love it. Alright, now we're going to put this one on the back, and this is going to be a little more difficult because our front one is still working on staying attached good. And I can't really you can hold it like this, which is probably what I'll do to get it on their string. Alright, here's the mold for the back. And do I want it this way? No. I want it with that little piece at the top. I'm gonna flip it over. Get the glue on there. All around the edges. Like so. So in the middle on this one because there's a lot more real estate to cover on this one, but I'm definitely going to work on this little piece here. That's the little ornament at the top and the little connector. Then I'm just going to put my finger on there. I'm going to have to wipe my hands off anyway, rub that glue all around. Really good. And off all the little corners and edges like that. Wipe your hands. And Uh oh. Try to pick it up without dropping it. And I am gonna grip this over here, but I'm not pushing on it. I want to lay this down and decide Oops, where I want it to go. I want to slide it up some trying to make sure it is centered before I start pushing down. I think it needs to come over a little bit. You don't have much time before this starts settling. So there we go. Turn this just a little there. Now I'm going to start tapping it down. And I do have a lot of excess glue here on this one. I'm trying to make sure not to touch these. They're already starting to harden. S. Trying to make sure not to touch those front ones too much. I do have a couple of spots on this that would like to touch up to smooth out a little. And I have that glue. I would like to get that excess glue off of there. Basically just smooth it out and maybe even take this little wipe and wipe off that excess right up to it. And then pat it down. Make sure there's no gaps showing. That's gonna be the back of our bottle. I'm just gonna set it down now because if I keep holding it, my hand will warm up that clay and will leave an impression. So this is gonna be our front. This is going to be the back. And We're gonna work on our paint after this fully cures tomorrow morning. So this has to fully cure now. Set it aside and don't touch it, and now work on cleaning up all your stuff. Like I said, it's best to clean up all your tools immediately. And I'm not gonna make you sit here and watch me do that, but I am gonna take my brushes right away and go ahead and wash them, and my molds. Don't forget to clean your moles. So they won't have dried clay in them. We will be back in the morning with a dry bottle to work with. 8. REVIEW COLORS & CHANGES: Okay, we have something else we need to discuss. Before we get into things tomorrow with painting the rest of this bottle. Now, I don't know if you can tell from looking at this, but can you see the difference in tone? Do you see there's a lot of darkening and there's a lot more greenish tone that has occurred with the image? This is a risk when using ink up prints. They the ink did not smear. And even though they were sprayed, um, it's something about using the mod podge over certain colors. I will darken and change the hue slightly, which is why I don't really like to pick out paint colors ahead of time too much. The lesson here is always be willing to change your paint colors. Because this is what I was originally going to use this cottage white and this French linen. Neither one of those will blend well with this. This is a parchment color background. And it has printed a lot later on the print, but as you can see, it has darkened considerably. Now, if you don't want to take that risk, with images, you can use specific decoupage images that are printed on specific papers for the process of doing this rather than using your own prints. Or if you have a laser printer, I don't think the hues change as much. I only have an ink yet, so I'm working with what I've got. This is my design. I didn't want to place a special order for it, so I just print them out here. It's still a pretty image. It does look more antique, which is the goal I'm going for with my booth and the things I'm offering. So I do like it, but I just wanted to bring up, it's not going to match the colors I'd originally picked out. Now, when I darken those colors with the glaze, it would help. But I'd like to get a closer color match on the image with the paint I put on the bottle, and I've been kind of like, there's the white. I tested it on there. Because of the change, I'm going to have to dip into my acrylics to match my paint. This is a little bit of artistic license, I guess, you would say, comes in handy. I've mixed a few acrylics. You can see here on this paper towel. That shade there is a lot closer to that. I still say that has a little bit more green in it, but it'll be fine as far as a match by the time I'm done because this will darken with the glaze. And that will change the hue of this. But to start off with, this is a color that I think would work best and here it is wet on this little paper plate palette I've made. I'm not going to paint it now because the bottle's not ready for paint yet. The clay's not ready. The bottle's ready, but the clays not. If you paint the clay before it is cured, it might not cure properly. So it's very important to let the clay dry overnight and let it cure good. I can tell you a little tip if you put your your fingers on the clay and it feels cold, really cold. It's not cured yet. When it is cured, you'll put it on there and it'll feel more room temperature, if that makes sense. The three colors of acrylic, I'm going to blend to make this particular color is titan buff, a tiny touch of olive green, and a tiny touch of raw umber. So don't be afraid to mix colors and don't be afraid to even mix your chalk paint, if that's the kind of paint you're using to get to a specific hue that you would like to better match your image. Because I am switching to acrylic, chalk paint sticks to anything. Now, you can see, this is a little chalk paint I put on the back here just to see. And I was able to wipe some of it off before it dried, but once it dried, I took a wet paper towel and went over it and it would not come off at that point. So it sticks to anything. But acrylic paints a different animal. So since I'm going to be using acrylics to create this specific color here that I need, and that's what I'm gonna be painting the bottle and the elements with, I need a better base than the mod podge. So I will use Oh, let me find it. I will use this. Clear gesso. The reason I will use clear gesso is it has a nice, first of all, it dries clear. It doesn't dry white. It goes It's white when it comes out of the bottle. Let's just put a little drop. See, it's white. So it's white when it goes on, but it dries clear. And it has a little more gritty texture than regular white gesso, which helps the acrylic paints stick really well. And that's something you want to make sure of that the paint will stick really well and not be easily scratched off or wiped off. Obviously, any kind of painted glass unless it's done with a specific glass paint, you could scratch it with a sharp object and it would show a scratch. But um you know, I try to prevent that the best I can. And most of these bottles being decorative and meant for display only, it's not a big concern because people aren't going to be handling them a lot. They're going to be displayed, and they're not going to be used as an actual item. So I will clear coat this. I won't worry about the clay. I don't want to get it on the clay. I'll get right up close to it with a brush and some of this clear gesso, and I will let that dry overnight as well. Then tomorrow we'll be ready to mix up this color and apply that to the bottle and then maybe apply some other chalk paint on top of that as an accent or dry brush or I don't know. I don't it's a process of decision making that you just kind of make it as you go based on the bottle, based on your design, your colors, how they're turning out once they've been coated and once they're dry. So that's the next step I'm going to take because I'm going to swap to the acrylics. I would I wanted to bring up white gesso, just regular white gesso. I did not white gesso under this because this is a clear bottle and it didn't need the white gesso under it. If I was using a colored bottle and I was going to put this image on a colored bottle, that color would affect how the image looks tone wise. So then I would have put down white gesso underneath before I placed the image. But because it's a clear bottle, I didn't have to do that. And now I'm just going to put the clear gesso on to prepare for adding the acrylic paint tomorrow. And we'll mix up the acrylic paint then rather than now because I don't want to mix it now. I won't I can make a jar up of it. I make jars of my paint. That is mixed up or just if I want to put them in a jar. I make jars of them to keep them. These little jelly jars we'll keep acrylic paint forever. You might have to refresh it with a little squirt of water or two every so often if it gets a little thick, but I have tons of jars of custom color paints that I've created. But I don't know that this is going to be something I need a whole lot of that color for. I won't need a whole lot for this bottle, and I don't know if I'm going to do a whole multitude of them. So I just want to mix up a little bit, and I don't want it to dry up. I don't want to take up a whole jar. So we'll do that tomorrow. And right now, I'm just going to coat this bottle with a clear gesso to prepare for tomorrow's paint. So I just wanted to go over that why I am making these changes. We learn as we go on what works and what doesn't work. So these colors I picked out of the chalk paint are by theirself anyway are not going to work. With this image. They're gonna they might be integrated with it later. And I don't know. I'll make that decision then. It's a decide as you go kind of thing. So I'll be back tomorrow with the bottle ready to paint. 9. DISCUSSION ON PAPER TYPES: Let's have a little discussion on the paper and how the prints turned out before we get started painting. I decided to test the other two horse images, and I took them outside, sprayed them on the back, and sprayed them on the front again with the crylon matt spray. And then I wet this one around the edge, and I could see it was turning it a little bit greenish, not quite as green as the bottle, but just a shade. And then I decided to not wet the edges and just tear and go ahead and put the mod pod on on a piece of glass testing this one. As you can see, it is very similar to that in color. It did turn that greenish tinge again. Now, when I've done my own prints, like this, I've usually used darker prints. Lately, I've been experimenting with the lighter prints and the color change did not happen with the darker prints. It's only happening with the lighter prints, it must have something to do with the lighter colors of ink and spraying with the crylon multiple times, it's a little lighter, but it still did it. So the only solution if you're going to do your own prints with ink chat is to work with that and change up paint colors and make changes as you go based on how the actual image comes out, or would be to order some paper from somewhere else. Now, I order my decoupage paper from Zazzle, and I wanted to show you this is the tissue paper, and this is the 18 pound tissue paper. And it's very nice to work with. Goes on very well. And then they also have, this is a huge sheet, so excuse the bigness of it, but this is the wrapping paper. See, as you can tell it's got the marks on the back. Now, here's the catch with asm. You can upload your own images and print them and have them shipped to you. The catch is on the tissue paper, you can order as small as a ten by 14 sheet, but you have to get three sheets at a time. Their price per sheet, and the design has to be the same on every sheet. When you order the wrapping paper, you have to order this large size, which is like 20 by 30. That's the smallest they have or 19 by 29 as they say it. I just round it up. So the nice thing about the wrapping paper, though, you still have to order three sheets. However, you can order three different designs on those three sheets. So if you wanted to lay out your image, in your editing program, set up your image to be this size. And then if you wanted smaller images on your wrapping paper, you paste them on the image and save it all as one image. And you could do multiple sizes like I've done here. I don't know if you can see it. But I did one really big because I was going to put this guy on a table. And then I did two smaller ones here that I could use on other projects of a different zebra that I painted. And I just set up my whole big paper like this in the image size, and then I set up another paper and I set up another paper. And when I ordered the three sheets of wrapping paper, they all have different images in different sizes on there. So it just depends you're going if you think you're going to do multiples of the same design, the tissue paper, might be the way to go. You can also do that, you know, set up a ten by 14 or a bigger sheet and lay out your images on that sheet, how you want them, the size you want them. But all three sheets are going to be the same. So when I ordered this butterfly sheet, I got three of the same sheet because I plan on doing multiples with the butterfly. But the zebra, on the wrapping paper, I don't plan on doing that many multiples. So the other two sheets of wrapping paper I got with this have different designs on them. The wrapping paper is a little thicker, but it works very well. If you order either of these and you put Md pad on top of these, they will not turn in color. These are professional prints. They're not ink yet, and they will not turn. Me, being the impatient person that I am, I like to do things on the fly. So if I create an image I like, I want to do it right then. So here I am with this horse art that is turned a little bit too green. This one is not quite as green. I could have sprayed it maybe multiple more times. And maybe that's the answer. Spray it multiple times on the front, multiple times on the back, let it dry for a day or two and then work with it. But me being impatient, I don't like to do that. So as you will learn in all my classes, I am not perfect. And sometimes things don't go as planned and I have to make changes on the fly. And that's part of what I'm you know what I teach you in my classes is that not everything works out the way it's planned, and, you know, I show you how I deal with that. And I hope that's okay. People seem to like that. But now, I don't know if the sun is causing too much of a glare there. You can definitely see the difference in the color tones here. Now, it's fun to use this because I am after a vintage look. A lot of vintage papers have that greenish tinge to them because that's just part of the vintage colors and things that were used. So I'm fine with this. I do know from my artistic experience that if I want this to appear later, then if I use dark colors around it, it will make this pop and appear brighter and it will stand out more. So I'm rethinking my colors that we discussed yesterday, and I'm also rethinking the knob. See, I was gonna use this knob on top. And this knob, when you put it up against that image, it's very bright. And remember, the other one I pulled out that I said was too dark. Well, guess what? It's not too dark now because my image darkened up. Like so. And so if I go darker on here to tie in with this knob and try to work my paints to match this, then that will make this pop and everything will blend together a little more. So once again, I'm making an artistic choice based on how the paper has turned out once I have decoupaged it on here. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to try to get these colors, and I can do that by a base coat with the brown first, a little bit of the olive green. And then notice this lighter color, that titan buff I have here, that will tie in with that very nicely. So I will work on these with that color and maybe some of that color in here as well. It's all dried up very well. It's cured. When I put my hand on it, it's more room temperature. Definitely cured, ready to go. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to try to tie in with this and make the bottle a little bit darker than I had originally intended. But that's what you got to do when things don't go as planned. So I hope that helps you maybe make some decisions on paper and printing, whether if you have ink jet printer, if you have a laser printer, it may be different. I don't have a laser printer, so I don't know, but I do know laser prints are better as far as not changing colors with the Md pod. So you'll just have to work with what you have and make decisions based on what you have. And the papers from Zazo I like them because you don't have to order a whole lot, and they're very, very, very good quality, very good quality, definitely worth the wait. So if you plan a little bit and order some papers like that, you won't have any problem. But if you want to do things on the fly like I'm doing, you see you might have to make adjustments, which is what we're gonna do. Alright. Let's get started painting. 10. PAINT THE BOTTLE: Okay, I'm ready to get started with some painting, and I'm going to try to make my paint color to match the knob the best I can. Now, the knob does. I don't know if you can see this. Let me. These little flecks right here, the sun's shining on it, so you may not be able to see real good, but they're like a light blue. I do not want to integrate that color into the overall bottle design because there's really no blue in here. What I may do later when it comes time to add the beads, I may pick out a couple of beads that may have that light blue tint to them just to tie in with that. But right now my goal is to get to this greenish brown color with the top or buff color for the elements. Now, because I'm going to go dark, I may not need to use my glaze because I use the glaze when these are lighter to enhance the details. Since I'm going to go dark, the darkness will be on the bottom of the sculpture already in the cracks, and I will probably dry pounce or dry brush the lighter color paints, the green and the titan buff on top of the brown and then maybe even add some of this metallic to it if I want to gold it up a little more. So right now, I'm going to start with painting those sculptural elements, so I'm going to put I'm going to move the paint knob over here just where I can see it off screen. I'm going to put a little bit of the raw umber on my palette, maybe a little more because I'm going to use quite a bit of that. And these are thicker acrylics. So I'm going to give a couple little squirts of water there just to loosen them up a little bit. I got a couple of pouncers here to do the bottle with, but for the sculptural elements, I like to use a stiff brush, small brush. This one I've used for years. It's very worn. It's an angle brush, but I like to use that to get down in the details. And I have a wet wipe here, handep. So if you don't have that, maybe wet a paper towel because if any of that gets which it will get on the design, I may want to wipe that away. So I'm just going to get the brush going and I don't need it to be super coated with paint, but get enough. I'm going to start up here at the top, and let's just go ahead and paint this. And I'll paint right over that glass too there at the top. Get this get it down in all the little crevices. With it being a stiffer brush, it's able to do that. It gets in those crevices really nicely. Now, this little part here, the glass part at the top, that is where I will probably tie some ribbon of some sort. I just think a little ribbon there to hide those ridges of where the bottle top would have been would be a good thing. I get down in all those crevices, scrub it in there. And I might have to add more than one coat, maybe. I don't know. This is kind of a do it as you go. But see how that brown really ties in with that. Now I'm going to work on this one. I'm gonna work on these two front ones first before I move to the back because I need my hand on the back right there to hold it. And I'm going to try to be a little bit more careful here so I don't make too much of a mess. The sun's trying to get in my eyes, and this is getting in my way, so let's move this a little bit. So I can scoot over here. And I tried to get the edges. It's gonna be on the glass, anyway, so I'm just trying not to make a mess of it on the actual image. A little bit on there won't hurt. I don't want to have to do too much cleanup. And if you do have to do cleanup, you need to do it pretty quickly because acrylics dry very fast. But a little bit being in there won't hurt. As long as I don't get it all over the image, and of course, it's gonna be on the glass anyway, so I'm not worried about that part. I got a little too much on that portion right there. So I'll need to wipe that off. Try to make sure to get in all the crevices. So no bright white of the clay is showing. You see that nice little mess there? Like I said, it being on the glass is not a problem, but around the image, try to even if you brush some of it back off the clay, it's still going to have the brown tones now that you've put it on there. It basically acts as a glaze. And you may not need I mean, you may not be able to get in, like, super close. In these little tiny areas. You could even brush some of it back off if you want, like that. It gives it a nice look aged, and you can brush some over the edge here of the image to actually bring the tone into the image, but not as strong as it was initially. See, it acts as a nice glaze there on that. That actually looks pretty good to wipe some of that back off. I don't want to wipe too much of it off, though. Alright, so that one got that one done. Now let's move to this one. I just love the sculptural elements and the decoupage together. But I also like doing just sculptural bottles with elements and no decoupage. But I had these horses I made and printed, and I wanted to see how they were going to do, which we learned through my experimentation here with ink jet printing that things don't always go as planned, so you have to be willing to make adjustments. I got a big blob of paint on the image. But that dark brown ties in real nice with the horse. Making sure I don't see any of the white from the clay. Okay. I'll see if I can get this. See? When you blend it out, it just becomes part of the image. And that's okay. If there's too much on there, you can wipe it away like that spot. If you need to get in crack, just kind of wad that up and go in there and dry brush or dry wipe it on the edges here. Now I'm gonna take a little back off the top, just like I did the other one, gives it a real nice antique look. I may not even need to add any of the green paint in there. At least not on those. And remember the clear gesso, it has a little bit of arity gritty feel to it. But that's what's making the paint cling very nicely. Now, see how by going dark around this image, it has made this image pop a little bit more. So that's pretty cool. Let me grab another white. That one's gotten kind of yucky. Now, I need to do the back. I need to figure out where to place my hands so I can do the back one. And something happened here. This apparently slid. See that? So apparently I should have had that laying flat a little bit. So we have a little difference there that we really shouldn't have. So that's gonna be interesting. I didn't realize that had done that. But like everything else, things don't always go as planned, and you have to be willing to alter what you're doing and come up with solutions rather than just, you know, a lot of people would have said when they saw the way the image darkened like it did, they might have said, Well, I messed up my project, and they might have scratched the project. But that's not necessary. Just use your creative brain and come up with solutions. Because there's always a solution. And even with this little incident here, there'll be some kind of solution. I may hide it with paint. I might highlight it. I don't know. We'll just have to see. But that is a little accidental thing that happened probably because I had the bottle sitting straight up and the glue wasn't cured enough for me to stand it straight up. That tight bond cures pretty quickly, but I might have had a little bit too much on there. Now, I'm not going to worry about wiping it off the bottle because it needs to be on the glass, but I am going to wipe some of this back. Like so. Just like I did on the front. You can blend out some of this other. It doesn't matter because the whole glass bottle is going to be painted this color. Yeah, we have that little spot right there. But that's there's a good possibility of a fix there that I'm already thinking of. Um, it doesn't look wonky when you hold it back. Doesn't It's a little bit tilted this way. I think this moved more than this moved. I think it moved off to that direction a little bit. And I could just pry that off of there, maybe. I don't know. It's on there pretty good. But Alright, I'm done with the brush for right now, so I'm gonna put that in my water. And I'm going to bring in some other colors here. I'm going to bring in the green. Put a little bit of that on there. This is Windsor and Newton olive green, great natural color. And some of this tighten buff because now we're going to start pouncing and I'm going to add a little water to both of those, and a little more to the brown because this is a thicker paint. And we're going to start pouncing, but I'm going to pounce between different colors without washing the little sponges. So we're going to start with the big one and then make sure where to put my hand on the bottle. We try to keep it. This way. Well, I'm gonna end up I'm gonna end up with it on me. I can hold it like this. Maybe. Let me get some brown or technically technically raw umber and just gonna start working that in, like, so It's hard to pounce on the paper plate. I should have done this on the glass palette, but I may need to get the smaller pouncer going. Let me do the big one first. All around here. There's gonna be a couple coats of paint here, so let me get the small one now to get in that little center area. I'm just gonna have to go right over it to get in there, and then I'll wipe it back off or adjust it later. Let's see here. Well, I got a little too much on that pouncer. Yeah, I am gonna have to wipe some of that back off. Okay. Let me get a little bit of that wiped back off there. So I can see the elements a little better. Oh, I need to fix this spot right here. And down here along this ridge at the bottom. I like that and maybe wipe a little more of this back off. There we go. I really like the antique look it's giving to the sculptural pieces just by doing this. Alright, I'm gonna dip in the olive green a little bit. And we're just gonna see. You know what I did not do? I did not wipe it back off of this at the top. I probably should have. It may be a little too late. It may be dried on there pretty good now. Well, some of it's wiping back off, but not much of it. So we may have to hit that with some paint up there. Yeah, it's not much coming up. Gives it a cool look, though. Alright, let me get some of this olive green and try to work some of that in here. I'm sorry the bottle is shaking. The video's not shaking. It's the bottle. And I'm not cleaning the little pouncer I may need to get my brush back out and pick up a little of this umber and tuck it in there in these areas. And I can pounce that, too. If I have enough on there, it'll go in there and fill those little spots in. A little bit anyway. I'm gonna need more paint on here. I can tell that. Uh oh. I accidentally picked up some of the titan buff. You see it? See how that's changing. But I can go back over it with some of the umber, if I didn't like it, which I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. I kind of liking this dark look. Hmm. Let me try to pick up a little bit here and pounce it off on the plate. I'm gonna try to come up here and integrate a little bit of this. And I accidentally pounced up there, it gives it a really neat look. It's a better look when you've pounced a few times up there where it's real bright. Oh, that's cool. I think that's gonna tie in. Really good with that. Okay, I'm liking that, but I can tell right now I'm gonna need some more green on here. And some more raw umber. But I probably need a lot more raw umber a I still got the whole rest of the bottle to do. I'm gonna put a bigger portion of that out. Raw umber is one of my favorite colors 'cause I do a lot of natural elements. I think I need another wipe too. I go through these things. We buy these things in bulk for me. I got a little of that tighten buff up there, and I think it's a little strong, so I wipe that back off. Alright, how are we doing here? And I also have to make sure when I handle the other side of the bottle, well, actually, I wasn't handling it. I was doing it in here. The other side should be getting dry pretty soon. Let's see. Oh, yeah. I could actually put my hands on that now. I keep getting my hands on the back side. Let me lay it in my hand like this. There we go. Yeah, that color's gonna work really well. So let me get some more of that tighten buff on this little pouncer. Not too much. I pounce a lot of it back off. And I'll go back over it with the green and the brown, too. The mix of colors is what gives it that real interesting Oops kind of stone look and the texture. So let's pout some of this green in there. Now we're getting a little bit too green, and this is where the raw umber will come back in and rescue us. I just want all of the colors in there. Gives it a real cool mossy look. Now I got too much up there. Alright. Let's get the raw umber on here. And darken it backup? Oh, yeah. I really like the way this is looking. So you just keep adding one color and then the other color and then the other color till you get the perfect mix that you like for your project. Oh, that's looking nice right there. That's looking really good. Oops. I need another place to lay that. Go a little bit of that off of there. And how did I get so much paint on this wipe? I want to go back over. This just a little bit, tone it back down. Now let's compare. Does that not look pretty much similar? It does to me. Alright. I'm gonna let this part of the bottle dry because I'm gonna have to flip this and do the other side. I could start working on the edges if I hold into the top here like this. So let's try that. See if that'll work. I got some sun glare coming in here that's driving me nuts. So I'm gonna see if I can fix that. Hang on just a second. Well, I still got some, but it's not as bad. I'm just trying to get a board up there. Yeah, doesn't want to stay. It's a little better. You can see the sun hitting the top of this bottle. I don't know. That may be too dark for you to see. Wanna take it back off. Well, let's see. Well, it's about the same. Well, it may be a little bright. Alright. I if I scoot over just a little bit. There we go. Alright, so we're gonna go with the brown first around this down this edge. Let me go right up over the edge of the image. Now we'll get a little bit of green on there. Put some of that green in there. Like this. I need to go over the image a little bit. You want to hurt it. That's what the wipe's for, though. You need to take some of it back off. Now let's get a little bit of this tightened buff. Trying to pounce a lot of it off my Alright, I'm going to have to go back over it with the brown anyway, so I'm just going to gently tap some of this in like so go right over onto the image a little bit, cause I want it to look like it's a part of it. I don't want it to look like it's just a frame around it. There we go. And of course, that's super bright. So this is when we go back with the brown. Back up here on top and tone that brightness down just a little bit. But I may leave some of that brightness right here where I've blended with the image because that works. Um, there we go. That's pretty good for that edge. Right there. Let me see if I can work on the other edge. With the brown and this little top section. See if I can get in there. I think the sun is trying to reach me over here. I have a mix of all colors on here at this point. Pouncing it gives it some good texture which blends in with the other texture. That's already on the bottle. All right, let's pick up a little green. Put some of that in there. Actually bring some of the green over here. Oops. That might have been a little too much right there. Trying to get don't forget the bottom edge. Now let's get some of the tighten buff going. And even right there in that center area. That's a little a little bright, except for the part right by the image that could use a little bit more brightness. There we go. I don't want to do too much. I probably have done too much. So I'm gonna use this wipe right here, trying to get to where I can use it and kind of back off some of this right here around this edge. There we go. Got some on the horse's hair. There. Oh, that's nice. Now I'm gonna get a little bit more of the brown to tone down some of this. And I'm just pouncing very gently here with this brown because I don't want to undo everything I just did. A little bit more of the brown on the bottom here. Okay. Maybe right there. Ooh, that's looking nice. Let me see if I can show you this. I got a little little bit right here. Wipe that back off. Oh, that's looking nice. And I really like this right here. It's done a little where I wipe that back off from around the image, I did a little highlight right there that I really like. Um, down here on the bottom, lighten up a little bit, right there. Actually bring that up over into the image there. There we go that's adding some nice little bits of texture there. Oh, yeah. I'm liking this. I might got a little too much dark there. Now, I put too much on there, you got to wipe some of it back off. There. Look how pretty that is. Now, let's look at the sides and the back. It looks like a really cool, dark, mossy green. The only area I see I don't particularly care for is right here. I think I might need a little more green and lighter right there. And then tone it down with the brown just a little. There we go. That's better. It's not such a harsh. Woops did not need that mark there. Not such a harsh line right there. That side looks good. Back looks good. So now it's time to let this dry for a little bit before I come and start touching back up on the sculpture parts because I do want to brighten those up with some of that tightened buff. And then I might even add some gold in here to give it a little shine. But this is what it looks like right now. And the bottom I had just briefly painted with chalk paint. When this bottle parts dry, I will probably put some tighten buff across that bottom just to make it smooth on the bottom because that's where my signature will go with my gold ink pen. So I'm gonna let this sit here and dry a little bit. And then I will I'm gonna wash my pouncers out, my brush out, and I will come back and we will touch up the sculpture areas and compare, see how it dried up compared to our topper. So I'll be back in a bit. 11. ADD PAINT ACCENTS & TOP: Alright, let's see where we are here. The bottle is pretty well dry, had a fan on it for a few minutes. It's a little sticky still. So I'm going to be cautious. But look how well these colors blend with that knob. Never thought I would be using this knob with this until this happened. So what I want to do now is let me pull my sleeves up and get another white because I'm probably gonna screw something up. But what I want to do now is do a little dusting of the titan buff on the sculptural elements, a very light dusting. So these kind of brushes here are some of my favorite brushes to do that with. They're really, really stiff. I don't even know what kind of brushes they are. Plaid is the brand. They're a stenciling brush. That's what they are. But they're really, really stiff, and they do very good for dusting on a little bit of color. So I'm going to pull out some of this tighten buff and just coat the end of the bristles of this brush, just the end, and then I'm going to smash most of it back out to get a really, really just light amount on that brush. And I'm going to start with this one here and I'm just going to lightly just very gently. I call it dusting. Dust across the top. Just very lightly. I'm not pressing hard at all. There's hardly any paint on there. I'm just letting the top edges of the design pick up the color and maybe a little bit on the sides there. Just very, very oops. Now, see, I got some on the bottle right there. And I can take the other stencil brush or the wipe. I don't want to get the original paint off there. I'm just kind of blending that out a little where I made that mistake. See, it's just given it a little dusting. We get a little bit more on there. It gives it this nice antique look. Now let's do this one over here. I'm not adding any more to the, I got a little much there. It's okay. If you do it sideways and drag it, the top edges will pick it up of the design. Like that. If you get a little too much on, you can always come back with a darker color. But that looks really nice to frame out the horse. Now, very carefully, I'm going to not handle those two. I'm going to swap over here and do this back one. I'm gonna get just a little bit more on the brush. Pounce most of it out and just drag it sideways rather than do this. That works better. Just over the raised edges of the design. And I still don't know what I'm going to do with that middle part right there. May not do anything with it. I don't know. You know what I might do, or I just did that little dot right there. I may get a little bit of the raw umber on this other little brush and pounce that back on top of there and blend that in with the background more. So it's not even really visible that much. Now that I've got some on this brush, if there's an area where I need to bring back a little darkness, Well, might have done too much on that. There we go. Okay, I really like that. Oops. So I'm gonna put this little one aside. Now I want to do the part around the top. I want to dust that. So I'm gonna get a little more of the tighten buff on there. Pounce, pounce, pounce, a lot of it back out. So it's a really, really dry brush. And turning it on his side very gently. I know it's kind of hard to see, but I have to also see what I'm doing. Okay. And I'm trying not to touch anything. I'm also going to add some gold in the same manner. Adding a little lighter colors there at the top. Just kind of dusting it like that. Trying to see if there's anywhere else I want to add some of this before I add some gold. The gold is really gonna make it come to life when I do that. See by painting that center spot where it slid a little bit and painting that darker to blend in with the background, it kind of disappears to the eye. And, you know, if you've ever examined vintage pieces, vintage pieces a lot of times have imperfections because a lot of them were handmade. And to me, that adds to the charm. And it shows this is not a factory produced piece of work. And it just adds to the uniqueness of it. Now, I'm going to get this tightened up off of here and dry the brush off really good on a rag. And I'm gonna go ahead and rinse this one off while I'm at it in case I need it. But I dry them off really, really good. So I think that's all of these colors I need at this moment, so I'm gonna put that aside. Now let's do a little metallic. If I can get it open. There we go. And with this, I usually just dip it into what's on the lid. And I also want it to be very, very dry on the dry brush. So I will pounce it off here on this paper towel and kind of scrub it off. I got to be careful what I touch here 'cause I don't want to touch what I just did. So if I hold it like this, I'm gonna try the bigger brush first. Just get a little gold on there. Pounce it off. Let's try on top. Oh, yeah. I think I need a little more on there, though, I might not need to pounce off as much. But once again, sideways, dragging it. See, 'cause I put that on dry brush, the lighter color. It Oh, yeah. I like that. It's already dry, so it's not really blending with it. But I just like to use the side and just very, very gently. I'm gonna have to turn it at an odd angle here and let the edges of the sculptural design pick this gold up. See? Alright, let's do the The element here. Oh, might have got a little too much gold, but that's okay. Nothing wrong with extra gold. I can take that wipe and wipe some of that back. It's just enough gold where it adds that little bit of richness. Pounce that off a little more. I'm gonna try to very carefully do this one. Very, very gently. It works really well with these sculptural ones. This is turning into quite the elegant bottle. Now I'm going to continue to hold it here and do this back. And I'm going to stay away from that little spot in the middle. And just dusting across those edges. So there's a little of the cream or the buff color showing hints of it through there, but there's also now gold in there. So now all of this has to dry. And when it dries, it will be time to add the rest of the embellishments, which will be ribbon around the top here. First, I will mount the knob. In fact, I need to do that right now. Let's go ahead and mount the knob. Let's just take care of that. Now, I am not going to use the tight bond glue for this. It needs a really, really strong bond for this. And I don't like to use E 6,000 because it's toxic, but my gosh, it is the best thing to use in cases like this. So I'm going to set my knob there to see kind of position it. So just inside this edge here. I need a good helping of the glue there, and I could even put a little bit on here if I want to. But because the whole bottle has to finish drying, at this point, this would be a good time to attach the knob. And then when I come back to do the embellishments, that's when we'll pick out ribbon and pick out beads and add a little bit more glamour to this bottle with the ribbon and the beads. And I do need to paint the bottom, though, in that tightened buff. And I can't do Oops. I've already got glue coming out. I can't do the bottom. When I've got that top sitting on there, it's got to dry for a little bit. So let me take care of that first before I get to that stage. And for that, I'm just going to take looking for the right brush. I don't want one that's real scrubby. This is a nice soft brush here. So without handling the areas I just painted, see how I've painted that white. I want that to be tight and buff. I want to get a good helping of that. And go over this because this will be where I sign it on the bottom. And I signed with a gold ink pen. Well, it's not I don't know what it is. It's a paint pen a gold paint pen. Want to make sure I can't see any of that from the sides. No, I don't see it. I don't see it. I will set this over here on my glass palette. Let's just pull that over. Because if it gets paint on here on this glass palette, it'll come off. So if it gets a little bit of paint stuck there, it'll come off. Gonna set it there very carefully. And now I'm gonna glue the knob on. And I can't really lay it sideways to show you because I need to position it in the straight up position. But when you do a knob like this, you'll figure it out. I want to put a nice, generous helping of the glue around the middle of this and maybe even some just a couple. It doesn't matter if some falls in the bottle. This is going to be permanently attached, and I'll go ahead and set it on there. Like that. Close this glue up before too much just seeps out on its own. Now, glue is seeping out around the edge, and I'm going to try to eyeball this to where I got it straight and push down. And it'll set fairly quickly. But there is glue that has seeped out around the edge on the area where the rings are where the top of the bottle would be, but we're gonna have a ribbon there. So I'm not worried about that. And if the glue is still a little wet and the ribbon sticks to it, that'll be fine. I'm just going to turn it around and look from all sides very carefully. Make sure that the top is on there. Pretty straight. And I will probably put a fan on this to let this dry a little bit more and let that set up, and then I'll come back and we will pick out ribbon and beads and all that fun stuff that's going to make it glamour up. 12. ADD JEWEL EMBELLISHMENTS: Okay, our top is mostly dry. I can turn it on its side. It's it's not moving. Well, it moves a little bit. So I'm still gonna have to be careful. It won't fall off, though, if I turn it that way. Um, but E 6,000 is a little bit flexible until it fully cures. But I wanted to go ahead and get the rest of this put together here with my accessories because this is the fun part. Now, I'm trying to decide on a ribbon, and I have used this ribbon before. This is a vintage piece of fabric ribbon that I really like, but it's a little bright for this bottle. And then I found this ribbon, which is a beige color with a little bit of gold. And I thought some of that wrapped around this top might be kind of nice. And I'd like to it may stick to the glue. Not really. But what I like to do is wrap a couple rounds of that around and tie a little knot. So I don't know how much of this I'm going to need to be able to do that. Let's see here. Let me just do it like this. And let's see if I can get a little knot tied somehow. I just need a little bit of a barrier there to cover that top part. Alright, let me trim this off here. And I'm just gonna I'm not gonna try a bow because I don't do bows very well, but I am just gonna tie a little knot there. And that's too much hanging off, in my opinion. So I'm gonna clip it off really, really close in like, so I got a couple extra pieces. I save everything. And I'm going to try to twist this a little so you can see the gold. There. Just a sweet little knot. It covers up that area where the rings are and gives it a little bit of softness to the bottle. And it blends in nicely because it's got the little gold flex in that particular ribbon. I want to mention before I did this, I did take it outside and spray it once around with the map finish spray I showed in the supply video. You're not supposed to handle it for a while, but it feels good enough for me to handle. So next thing I want to do is add some jewels to it. And I have several several jewels here, these are from Hobby Lobby. I like to use vintage jewels, and I did I don't have a lot because I used to be a jewelry designer, and I designed with vintage jewels and parts and pieces, and I don't have a lot of those left. I have a few things left, and I found this little dangle here with the aurora bola beads. It's already got a little hook. It's ready to hook on a chain. And I have this brass chain. It's just a necklace chain, and obviously, I won't need the full necklace. So I think I will wrap the chain around the neck and take the clasp off. There's a little jump ring there and use that jump ring to hook two dangles together and then put the vintage beads on one and then some of these other beads on another one. And I have some brass headpins also bought from Hobby Lobby. To be able to fix up some beads. And remember, I said the top has a little bit of blue in it, and I found these blue beads that are really pretty. But I also have these, which are even prettier, in my opinion. So this one, I don't think I'm going to use. Now, these might be a possibility. Let's see. Some of those are kind of interesting. And there's a little there's actually a little grouping here already, and that's kind of got a little bluish look. And that might look pretty. That little section here with three beads might look pretty as a dangle next to this one. So I may use that instead of these just for something different. These I like as well. I used them on my last prayer bottle I made. And there's that looks like a very similar bead to that. That almost looks purple. I can't tell if that's purple or blue. But when I hold it up there, it kind of blends with that light blue. So I'm thinking this little section right here. With the two gold beads, it either end and these beads in the middle as a dangle. That's what I'm thinking rather than this. Rather than those. I don't need a whole lot. This is a smaller bottle, so I don't really want to overdo it. I do want to clip these out while I have them in my face. While I have the spot marks, I'm gonna use wire cutters and just lay them out here. Those two, this one, and these two kind of in a row. Ah? I can hold on to that little one. Then I can put the rest of these back in there. There's a Okay. So the chain, we need to figure out how much chain. I'm going to go ahead and now, you would obviously if you're gonna attach jewelry, you would need some jewelry tools. So I'm going to unattach the jump ring that's on here. And let's see if I can get it undone, which you usually need two pliers or pliers on one end and your finger on the other. Alright, there's that jump ring, which can be quit, which can be used to hook the two pieces together. Now, obviously, I don't need all of this chain. And my thinking was join them at the top of the jump ring, have one shorter dangle and one a little bit longer. So I may cut this chain right there. Okay. Now, I'll put it around here. And I know you won't be able to see this very well. I'm just lining it up to where I could have one longer angle and one shorter angle like that. And I'm going to grab that jumper I took off of the class with my pliers and try to get it in there. I probably need my other glasses on so I can see what I'm doing. Doesn't want to go. Let's put some other glasses on. Alright. Just trying to line it up where I want the dangles. Now, if I can get this jump ring in here. Apparently, the pliers are magnetic. There. I got it in one side. And I may need to actually have it a little bit lower than that. There we go. There. Now I've got it hooked through both of them. While I have hold of that jump ring, I will grab my other pliers. And I don't know if you can see this, but I twist them back together without breaking anything preferably. So they're lined up like that and hooked with the ring. And there's my dangle. See that? One longer one, one shorter one. So this is the vintage beads here. They're going to be a little shorter than these are once I put a headpin on those. So I'm gonna hang the shorter ones here and the longer ones on the other side. You get out a headpin for those. Hopefully that headpin will go through this chain. Yes, it will. Okay. I'm going to go ahead. This one already has since it's a vintage part off of a previous jewelry design, it already has a little hook on the end. So I'm just gonna try to squeeze that closed down there. There we go. Oh, in that pretty See? It'll dangle right there by the horse. Now let's put this longer one together. If I can pick up the headpin. So I'm gonna put one little bead on. The little beads help brace the other beads in place. One of these beads. The middle bead, which has the bluish color, slightly bluish. This next bead, there and the last gold bead. And so this will make a dangle off of there. So here's how I do that. I take my round jewelry pliers and I push the beads down as far as they'll go. I do it at the very tip, so my loops not super huge. And I will bend, holding it very tight, bend the headpin this way. See that? Then I will shift, just take my pliers and turn and grab right here, and I will pull it right back over the tip toward me like that down toward the beads. And now we have a little loop starting to happen. Now I will clip this with the wire cutters right there. See the little loop. So now I'm ready to hook that in to the chain. I check the angle. Yeah, I like that. I'll take the round pliers and curve it a little bit more closed with them. And then the flat pliers, squeeze it completely closed till it touches like that. It's not super fancy. And now we have a nice little bit of bling there. Now I'm thinking, I want something here at the top, a little cluster of something, where I put that first jumpring. Just add a little bit more. So let me pull back out these other beads and see what I've got that might work and a headpin. I don't know if I want to attach two separate things or several things. Let's do. Let's try just I might do two. Why not? And I can hook both up here, one, and then the other. I do like this bead right here. It's got an aurora boless tint to it, which makes it change colors and a copper, sort of a copper brown. I like that. There are some little flat beds that look like spinners, which might be interesting. And let's see what we got over here. We've got a couple of those colors. We have this great big one here, which is really too big and it's too bright for this. Yeah, this one, which is very interesting, it's like a triangular bead. I kind of like that. I might do that one. And I might need a bead at the top of that and a bead at the bottom of that. We also have this nice sparkly bead there, which could be kind of I don't want to be too chunky, though. Let me pull out two of these little gold ones again. And let's see. What else I got? Don't I use one of those? Might be kind of neat. See, decision making is the hardest part of things here. Let's see. I might not need a bead to end on this. No, that'll stay on there just fine. So let's put let's try one of these spinner beads. And then the other one. Finding the holes is in these beads sometimes is challenging. See, they they make a neat little they spin. That's kind of interesting. This one may be too big on top. Yeah, it's too big on top of those. Maybe underneath them. I don't know that may look fine just as it is, without the spinners with one of these. Like I said, I don't want it to be too chunky. Let's not use the spinners. Let's just do those out of the way. Let's do this one, and then let's put one of these tiny gold beads here and do this long one. This triangular one. I really like the angles on that bead. So then we'll have that and this. And I don't know if that's too much. I'm going to hook this one on first. So once again, I'm going to make my loop. I'm going to push this down as tight as I can. Get down to the very tip because if you're too far this way, you're going to make a huge loop, and I don't want my loop being that huge. I just want to bend that away from me like that. Turn the pliers to the top of it, and bend it all the way back around toward the beads. Like I said, it's been a while since I've done this. We're going to cut this. I save those little pieces if they don't fly across the room. And I'm gonna hook it right to the jumpering and use these flat pliers to close that loop. Making sure it's all the way close. Oh, that's pretty. See? That angle beat? Oh, I love that. Now, I think I'm going to attach this one to the same jump ring, but kind of behind that one. So it'll kind of cluster there with it. So once again, grab it, bend away, turn the pliers up, bend toward, and all the way back around toward those beads. And as you do this, if you're attaching beads, you'll get better at it if you've never done it before. Clip that off, save it. I need to I've kind of bent that, so I need to straighten that up. I'm gonna hook that on that same ring and close it with the flat pliers. So now we have a little cluster there of that. Isn't that pretty? I almost think there needs here I am adding more beads. I almost think there needs to be another colored bead somewhere in here, but maybe not. Maybe not, or maybe I could I don't know. Maybe that's good enough. Like I said, I don't want to overdo it. I really do like the colors of these, though. I don't know how well you can see those 'cause they're flopping around. But they hang nicely when I hold it up straight. They hang nicely next to the horse. So I think I'm gonna stop right there except for signing my name on the bottom, which is ready. So let me dig out my famous gold pen I love to sign with. And shake it up. Once again, this is this deco brand, deco color. I'm assuming it's the same brand from deco art. The logo looks the same. The metallics I use. I'm gonna shake this up and I'm going to just test it on a piece of paper first to make sure it's writing. And I'm going to flip this horizontally. Sign my name and write the year. Blow on it. That's not going to touch, now see my beads have now swiveled to the back. They also look good on the back. So the back is a sculptural side now, and the front is the art side. Like that. Isn't that just beautiful? I'm really happy with the way this turned out. I hope you guys like it, too, and have fun creating your own bottle art. And I am calling this project done other than curing the rest of the way. 13. FINAL THOUGHTS: Congratulations. You've completed the artful Treasure class. I hope you've enjoyed learning the process as much as I enjoy creating these pieces. Remember, each bottle you make is unique. Each curve, each texture, each embellishment tells a little story. And that's what makes these pieces so special. They're not just decorative. There are small sculptural artworks that hold personality and presents. I encourage you to experiment, try different bottles, different vases, or other objects that are glass or otherwise, mix different decoupage art, sculpted details, ribbons and jewelry pieces. You might even start a full collection of artful treasures, each one telling its own story or even an entire series around a theme. If you like, upload your photo of your piece that you make so others in class can see your creation. Sharing your work is part of the fun and helps inspire others. Thank you so much for joining me. I can't wait to see what you create, and I hope this inspires you to look at ordinary objects in a new way to see potential, transform them, and create something beautiful.