Spooky Halloween Bottles

I've been working to try and spook up our boring mantle. There are so many cute ideas out there that I've become frustrated with how non-festive our family room is. So...I'm stepping it up.

If you're like us, you have a pile of collected vases/bottles that you've stored after receiving roses for your anniversary or a bouquet of flowers for your birthday. We do nothing with them. They sit and gather dust. I decided to put them into good use.

There are a pile of awesome looking vintage labels floating around the internet. Most of them are free printables. I put two and two together and made myself some spooky Halloween apothecary bottles.

These are ridiculously easy to make. They take very little time and don't require much in the way of materials.

Start with your basic garden variety flower vase or glass jar.

A mild sampling of what we had available.

You could technically put your labels on the bottles at this point, but come on , so not festive. I decided to rough them up. Remember that asphalt paint I loved so much for the monogram project? It was still sitting out...so there we go. I slathered that on in a haphazard layer and let it dry. I didn't want perfection...I want the glass to look used and abused. SOOOO nice to paint and not worry about how it looked at the end. I love lazy project steps.

After that...head to the computer, peruse some Pinterest, and find some awesome labels. I printed them out on both regular paper and photo paper. Because I'm indecisive like that. I liked the shiny surface of the photo paper, but the thickness made it more difficult to adhere. I ended up preferring the regular paper. Not only did it adhere better...it looks a little more rough and tumble.

After cutting out my selected labels, I ran them through my Xyron to make some seriously wicked stickers. I sized them up to see which label fit each vase best. Then I started adhering. My first label really ticked me off when I got a wrinkle at the edge. Until I finished putting it on. After that I realized that the extra wrinkle made it look a bit more vintage. Once again, awesome bonus...lazy crafting, whee!! I stuck the rest of the labels on with abandon.

They turned out pretty good and the entire project took me about 3 hours, start to finish. Not too shabby. 

And now my mantle is starting to look a little more like Halloween...

Excuse the blurriness.

It's getting there. I'm still scheming... But I think the banner and the bottles go together well. It's definitely a start.

Oh...and as a bonus...I was fiddling around with my photo editing software and made myself some more...Halloweenish photos.

This post is part of a series on Creative Crafting. For the other posts...click here.