Wine Bottle Label Art

Once upon a time... a very long time ago (or like a year ago) I found a link on wikihow for making art using the labels on wine bottles.  I LOVED the idea of doing this and instantly came up with an idea.  I've  been to Napa and Sonoma a few times and I thought it would be a dope idea to find wine from places I've been and use those labels to make my art.  So... over the past year or so, I've been searching for wines from Vineyards I've been to and in the mean time saving bottles for practice removing the labels.

Back in December I finally had enough bottles to practice on AND 5 bottles from vineyards I'd been to... and they were all empty and ready to play with!  Here are all the bottles:

and here are the 5 bottles I needed to end up perfect:

So the Wikihow article gives 2 different ways to remove the labels; putting the bottle in the oven on a semi-low heat for 10 minutes or pouring boiling water into the bottle and letting it sit for approx. 15 minutes.  The idea in both is to heat the glue that is holding the label enough to remove it cleanly.
Here is my work area and supplies; I'm all set to give this a shot:

Well, both methods were kind of lame... good thing I had several practice bottles!  All bottles have different labels, some come off fairly easy and others... not so much.
After several labels destroyed and a few that came off easy as pie:

I was finally ready to give my good bottles a shot (and because I had no more bottles to practice on).  I found that pouring boiling water into the bottle and letting it sit for like 5-10 minutes worked the best, so I decided that was how I'd start these bottles.  After MUCH frustration I said screw it and poured the boiling water directly over the labels... this helped a great deal, however it made the paper labels rip here and there as I was trying to pull it off.  Here is the first one:

...and the beginning of the second one:

Round about that time I was getting very impatient, so the pictures stopped... I lost one of the labels completely but ended up with four total (2 came off super easy and 2 look rough):

The next step is framing them and making them look good.  I went to the dollar store for frames, cause really... why spend a lot of money on a frame, it would only take away from the label itself, which is the point behind the project.

Now, fast forward to February, this weekend.  Since I spent some time attempting the scraps last weekend, I'm motivated again to work on this project.  I needed to rough up one of the labels because I've decided to go with the 'rustic look'... I did that last night; got it wet and crumpled it into a ball a few times, took some sand paper to the edges, etc.

I have the frames, I have the labels (I've decided to only use 3 of them), and I've made a stop at JoAnn's for some other supplies.  Off we go!

I had to buy 5x7 frames because one of the labels is pretty big, so there is some extra space I have to fill... here are some pictures along the way:

I took a sheet of off-white paper and made it half the size of the White sheet I was planning to use as the background, to give some dimension and contrast.  I also took some embellishments that Renee sent me and added those.  Then I had 2 little kits from the craft store with wine themed things in it... so I pick and choose and add what I like to end up with these finished products:

They turned out pretty well, I think.  Normally I pretty much hate the finished product of what I try and do, but I definitely don't hate these nor do I love them.

Now to bring it all together on the wall... if you remember back in the day when I was blogging on myspace, I wrote several bogs about a bottle that I was trying to have flattened, but it was ruined, so I was searching for another???  Well that story ended by me finding another bottle and after a few attempts it was finally flattened for me.  That bottle was the basis behind the wine label art, so here is what it all looks like on my wall:

I am almost 100% pleased with how it all turned out.  I feel like the finished project hanging on the wall is too small for the space where it's hung.  As you may or may not know, I live in the basement of my mom's house, so I have several things down here that a normal basement doesn't have (mini-fridge, microwave, water cooler) so that I don't have to go upstairs all the time; it's like a mini kitchen without a sink.  I have hung this project on the wall to the side of those things, here is a different picture:

Maybe the solution is to move the stuff lower on the wall... I'm not sure.  Doesn't matter though, I will either adjust to it or move it if I'm not happy.

Either way... my crafts continue!  Hope you enjoyed :)