Priyanka Shashi: Decoupage Bottle Art Workshop

This was my first time workshop with wonderful ladies. All the participants were so enthusiastic and creative. They adorned their bottles beautifully to turn the empty glass bottles in attractive home decor piece.

I want to enable all the participants of my workshop to recreate the bottles again by their own. So here I will tell the complete ‘workshop tale’ with easy steps of Decoupage Bottle Art and a check list of materials at the end.

Here we go....

Decoupage is the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cutouts onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold leaf and other decorative elements.

1. Prepare the bottle

Started with preparing the bottles by cleaning them with thinners. ‘Hot water’ was the safeguard for us to speed up the process of removing paper stickers and the remains of glue or paper we wiped off with damped cloth in ‘enamel thinner’.

*Enamel thinner is oil based, so after its usage remember to wash the bottle with dish washing soap and wipe it dry with clean cloth.

2. Cover the bottle with White Gesso

As soon as the bottle was ready to work on the participants made them ‘white fairies’ by putting two base coats of ‘white gesso’ with foam dabbers.

3. Cut out the Decoupage Napkin

All the participants selected decoupage napkins of their own choice and cut the wanted images out of it. For that again the ‘water’ was the trick – used a detail brush with clean water to outline the wanted images and pulled away the extra part gently with hands. It was easy peasy lemon squeezy….😀😀

4. Pasting the Napkin

Before beginning we removed back layers of napkin which is very important step. Ensuring the place of the napkin design on bottle we started to paste it by putting mod podge (not very thick) on the bottle surface. Napkin design needed to be pressed out gently either with fingers or with brush from middle to out to make it wrinkle free. Pressure of your brush should not be rough as you will tear your napkin.

5. Apply Mod Podge Layer

The participant applied one thin layer of mod podge over napkin images pasted on the bottle to give a secure coat.

6. Adding Painting Effects

Now we added tints and gradients of one or more colours to add painting effects specially at the top and bottom of the bottle. This also had to be done with foam dabbers/sponges.

*Always try not to add colours too near to napkin designs. If mistakenly colour goes in the napkin design wipe it with damp cloth immediately.

For special writing effect we used script stamp.

7. Varnishing the Bottle

When all the participants were happy with the final look of painting and stamping effect they did 2 to 3 layers of clear varnish to secure the art work and make it waterproof.

8. Adding Embellishments

After finishing all the cutting, pasting, painting and varnishing process, we decorated the bottles with some simple things like jute rope, ribbons, beads, flowers and butterflies to make it more attractive.

Materials Required and where to Buy: