Ancient Treasure by Gill Humphrey

This week I have an upcycle/repurpose project using a small well known brand bottle because I love its shape. To make this piece I first looked at the Mirror Frame Mould selecting the one that would fit within the flat surface of the bottle and then cast it with Amazing Casting Resin lifting it out of the mould when set but still soft so that it could set hard around the contours of the bottle. I then repeated this step so I had one for each side and in addition I cast one of the small icons to sit on the top of the bottle lid.

I then degreased the bottle with alcohol (hand sanitiser) before coating with Bonding Primer once the first layer had dried I then applied a second layer of the bonding primer and left it to dry for 24 hours so that it was fully cured.

The bottle and the resin pieces were then painted with a layer of Cookie Allegro Paint leaving the area that the frame was going to expose white. When the paint had dried I applied a layer of Crackle Glaze to the bottle and left it to dry naturally.

The bottle top, small icon and frames were then distressed with White Antiquing Gel ensuring the pieces were fully coated before wiping back the surface. 

 

Once the Crackle Glaze had dried I applied Ivory Matte Acrylic over the brown paint and let to dry to create the cracks - I used a paint brush to apply the paint so that I got very random cracks and also varied the thickness of the paint to increase crack variability.

Next I tore out two images from the small icon rabbit rice paper and used Decoupage Glue and Varnish Matte to apply and seal it to the white areas of the bottle before adding the frames with Heavy Body Gel Matte.

Once the Heavy Body Hel had set I then added two layers of Silky Shine Varnish to the pictures letting the layers dry before applying the next one. You could add more layers if you wanted to build up the depth of the varnish over the images. 

I hope you like this project - it is adaptable to so many non-porous surfaces as the Bonding Primer makes surface preparation easy and of course there are a multitude of rice papers that could be used to fill the frame elements.