For handcrafted sea life bottle art You’ll want to choose a bottle that is as large as possible. This will make it easier for you to apply the stickers without getting your hands or fingers dirty.
If you’re feeling creative, you can use any type of glass bottle—even those with intricate designs on them (like whiskey bottles or wine bottles). Just be sure not to use anything too fragile or breakable. You don’t want to be responsible for breaking someone’s favorite drink!
Find paint.
Now that you’ve chosen a bottle, it’s time to find paint. There are many different kinds of paints available at your local craft store, but I’ll give you some general guidelines for finding the right one for your project:
- Choose a bottle with a color that complements its contents. For example, if you’re using ocean-themed artwork and want the sea creature(s) in your piece to appear blue-and-greenish rather than red or orange—or perhaps even pinkish—choose an opaque colored glass vial or jar instead of clear plastic ones like those used for storing medicine or vitamins.
- If possible (and depending on how much time/money/effort goes into making this project), try not mixing too many colors together at once! Mixing too much will make it difficult for people who do not have enough experience working with watercolors/paints like myself (because then they’ll end up having their brains explode).
Find a template to match the pattern you want.
- Paint the bottle.
- Wash out the bottle and apply sealant, or you can cover the bottle with clear epoxy.
Takeaway: Cure time varies according to what you use as a base coat and how thick it is in comparison to its size (i.e., if you’re painting a large fish on top of another fish, then they’ll take longer than just painting one big fish).
Now that you have your bottle, it’s time to paint it!
First, find a container in which to keep your paints. Mine is an old mason jar that I picked up at the flea market and used for this project. It worked perfectly because it was just big enough for my sea lion bottle art idea but not too big so that the paint would run all over everything else (like a ceramic cup).
Next, get out your paints and brushes—it’s important to note here that we’re going down at least one level of “handmade” since we’re using acrylics instead of watercolors or oil paints like I did when making felt sea lion hats last year! They’re much easier on my hands and wrists during this step than watercolors would be, which makes me happy because I don’t want anything getting damaged while painting away at these cute little critters all day long…
Wash out the handcrafted sea life bottle art and apply sealant, or you can cover the bottle with clear epoxy. Determine which side of the bottle will be the back, and which will be the front. Paint one side of your artwork on top of this first layer of paint so that it is hidden by your design when you are finished applying it to your bottle. This way, if someone pulls off their handcrafted sea life gift from their purse/bag/backpack and finds something unexpected printed on its surface (like a sticker), then they will know what it really was!
Cure time varies according to what you’re doing; it’s somewhere between 8 and 24 hours. A few days is ideal, but if you need something right away, don’t worry! Just try not to leave it too long on the countertop or anywhere where people can see it.
