Message (on) a Bottle

When we were in Hay-on-Wye I saw these cute bottles in a shop where someone had put a clever label on that made them look all old fashioned and full of something interesting. There were bottles with things like Eye of Newt and Dragon’s Blood.  They also cost a bit of money and I knew I could make that at home for cheap or free.

First I had to decide what I wanted to do. I had some interesting bottles left over from that bespoke cocktail called Musty Books that Spiderman had bought us for our anniversary. I had some parchment paper that looked old. All I needed was an idea.

I decided to make the smaller bottle into Love Potion Number Nine and the larger bottle into something made from the witch’s brew in Macbeth since we saw the play recently. I decided to call it Three Witches Elixir and have the ingredients be everything that went into the cauldron. You know—eyes of newt, toe of frog, etc. but as a joke I decided to add monosodium glutamate at the end.

I looked online for some vintage clip art and found this amazing treasure trove of a website: http://thegraphicsfairy.com/ and found cool drawings of a human heart for the love potion and the skeleton of a chameleon for the witch’s brew. I found a font that looked like spidery handwriting  then printed them out on parchment paper.

I used a ruler to tear the edges in relatively straight lines and then used a brown sharpie to antique the edges. Click on these pictures to see the detail.

Here they are in front of their respective bottles.

Then I used some watered down PVA glue (like Elmer’s glue) to glue the labels to their bottles.  

Then I filled them with coloured water—just add food colouring—and here is how they came out!

 

I am really pleased as they were made from stuff I had just lying about the house.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this ways comes!