Embossed Wine Bottle Tutorial

I wanted to make something very personal for our good friends for their wedding to add to the gifts we were giving them. Their last name gave me an idea and I decided to use images to embellish a wine bottle. Their last name is Applebee and below I will show you how I made this gift personal for them.

I googled apple and bee images then saved and re-sized them.

Stencil fabric purchased at Walmart.

I positioned them under the stencil fabric and traced the design with a fine point sharpie.

After tracing designs I cut them out with an Exacto knife on my cutting mat.

Close up of cut out designs. FYI: I cut out the smallest details last and just put my fingers on either side of part I was cutting to keep the stencil from moving.

Next I placed the stencil over craft foam and traced the designs onto the foam and started cutting all the pieces out. This didn't take nearly as long as cutting it from the stencil fabric.

These small curved scissors are awesome for small detail.

Pieces are all cut out and ready to start placing on the wine bottle.

Setting the pieces up to decide the layout.

I put some Aleene's Tacky Glue into a plastic lid so I could apply it to the pieces with a paintbrush.

I started with the apple. I applied a liberal amount of glue to the back of the apple and placed it on the bottle. You will want to put something like a piece of a baggie over the design then apply the Glad Press and Seal. The Glad Press and Seal will stick to the foam and after all of that tedious work you don't want the plastic wrap ripping your design off. The foam is a bit resistant to bending so the Glad Press and Seal works perfect to hold it down until it dries.

Close up.

All of the pieces are glued on now. Do your best to remove any excess glue that "smooshes" out from under the foam and on the glass before it dries or it will show under the paint. I made the mistake of just smoothing out the excess glue onto the bottle and it showed until I got many many coats of paint on.

Next I spray painted them with about 10 coats of flat white enamel. I put the bottle upside down on a dowel and put the dowel in a vise so I could paint the bottom as well. Sorry I didn't take a photo of that.

After paint was completely dry, (I waited 3-4 days) I used double stick tape on the bottle neck (so I didn't have to hide knots) added colored Jute and a tree charm to symbolize growth to the neck of the wine bottle. I like the subtleness of the apple and the bee while still being able to enjoy the rest of the design from afar. You could even paint the foam after painting the bottle. I wanted it to look like the bottle was just embossed. Hope this is clear enough for you.

~Jody