Nerdy Craft Time - Potions!

Starting at the back left, Armadillo Bile, Spiders, Dragon Blood, an Erumpet Horn. and a Bezoar box

Another thing I've been seeing around lately is this "Make your own potions bottles" for Halloween decorations or whenever. I love Halloween crafts more then your average person and I felt this would be a really fun nerdy craft. The nerdy part is that it reminds me of Harry Potter. As a constant reader of Harry Potter, I feel I'm slightly qualified to make that connection. What I mean by "constant reader" is that I've been in an endless Harry Potter loop for years now. I read them every single night before bed, re reading a familiar story not only gives me lovely dreams but it also makes it easier for me to put the book down before 3am. Yes, I do read other books, Harry Potter is just my bedtime reading staple. I remember, when I read Harry Potter for the first time, sneaking them into class so I could read them instead of you know, learning. Who cares about science when you have magic at your fingertips? Somehow (magically!) I never got caught. I also remember making Harry Potter costumes with my friends to go see the movies, because who wants to see a movie in normal clothes? Quoting Harry Potter in every day life. I've busted out several Albus Dumbledore quotes while comforting friends who had broken up with boyfriends.
So what does every Harry Potter nerd need to feel complete once they are in the tail end of their 20's and raising a mini Harry Potter fan? (Or not, you totally don't need to have children to make these! Just throwing it out there that my almost 5 year old is also a Harry Potter nerd, it's never too early people.)
DIY potion ingredient bottles!  You can find a list of Harry Potter potion ingredients HERE if you are interested!

The basic technique is to use a glue gun to make a label on your bottle and spray paint that bitch. And BAM you have a potion or poison bottle. Obviously if you wanted to make a poison bottle for Halloween you totally could, but being that this is nerdy craft time, it's potion ingredient bottles.  I used the same basic principal, using hot glue (which was way easier then I thought it would be!) but I used acrylic paint and a brush instead of spray paint which gave my bottles a fun texture from the brush strokes. After all of this, a base coat of spray paint probably would have worked a little nicer, but I wasn't about to go out and buy 4 different colors of spray paint when I had perfectly good paint at home. Use what you have.

So I started out with 2 bottles (well they are probably vases) from our local thrift store, I think I paid a total of $1.50 for the two of them. I also have a Kraft Mac and Cheese box. and, not pictured but, the "Spider" jar was an old glass Skippy peanut butter jar found in my grandmother's basement. For this step you'll also need a glue gun and several sticks of glue for it. I used 7 or 8 sticks for all 4 items. But it totally depends on how raised up you want your lettering and if you'll put a design on your bottle as well.
Make sure your bottles/jars/boxes/jugs/vases are clean and free of dust and dirt before you start.

 

What you'll want to do now is let your glue gun warm up, mine is old and takes like 10 minutes but make sure you give it enough time to really get hot, it will just make everything go more smoothly. Once it's hot, you'll want to do the lettering. I free handed it, but if you'd like you can practice on a smooth piece of cardboard first. I suppose you could also make your letters on a piece of parchment or waxed paper, wait til they dry and peel them off, then hot glue them to your bottle. Whatever you prefer. I'm horrible at centering things so of course you can't see Armadillo and Bile at the same time. It works for me though. It doesn't have to be perfect, it's your bottle after all. Remember, nerdy craft time is about having fun. Anyway, you'll want to give it a solid 20 minutes to really dry up and harden on your bottles. You don't have to worry about those little strings of glue, work with them, they add an awesome texture to your bottles. You'll also want to do your design, You could get really crazy here if you wanted to. 

 

Just a close up of it when the glue is dry and before paint.

 

Once your glue is dry you'll want to gather up your painting supplies and spread some newspaper on your work surface. Unless you don't mind if it gets paint covered. These are the only colors I used on my bottles. It's just a mix of acrylic paints that I've acquired over the years. If you would like to know the exact colors let me know in the comments.

 

 

I also used a single medium sized flat brush. The brand name of this has worn off but I'm certain I got it at Michael's. However, Wal-Mart, and numerous hobby stores sell brushes like this as well. I also used a piece of tinfoil to put my paint on. You can use anything, paper plate, piece of cardboard, plastic lid.. whatever you have on hand that your paint can't soak through.

I threw a base coat on all of my potion containers. I repainted the gold one red because you really should use the darkest colors first. (There's an exception to this and I'll tell you about it later) If you use your lightest color first you run the risk of your darker color completely covering it. You won't get a fun peek of another color at all.

Just make sure you don't put your base coat on too thick or you'll ruin your design and lettering. Thin coats. Even if you have to do one or 2 passes. Also, let this dry completely before you move on. Acrylic craft paint doesn't really love to stick to glass and if you go over it again too soon you'll chip it off, which is very hard to fix. You'll notice my finished Dragon Blood bottle has some odd spots on it, those are chips that I couldn't fix. Give it a good hour before you go back in.

 So these are the finished products. All I did was, after the base coat I dipped my brush into a lighter color and brushed a piece of newspaper until I had gotten most of the paint off, then I very roughly painted over the base coat. I concentrated on the lettering just to make sure it stood out. I painted one direction all around the container (up and down motion) with one color and then went over that with my second top color painting the other way (side to side motion). If you just paint one way you'll get blank spots, it just looks nicer if you paint in both directions.
Another way to cover the clear glasses more effectively is to also coat the inside of the jar with paint. However, if you'd like to put something in your jar you probably should skip that all together, because the paint can flake and ruin whatever you put inside. I'll break down what I did differently with each container as well.

The Bezoar box is the exception to my dark colors first. If you paint your container a light color. you can go over it very lightly with a darker color to get the letters to stand out. For this one I really concentrated on the lettering with my darker color. But it all depends on the effect you want. Light colors on light colors aren't going to stand out very much, so it's a nice idea to lightly brush them with a darker color. I used a terra cotta brown on this one with red and black over that. In that order.

This is the effect you get if you paint in one direction.

This started as my least favorite jar but ended up being my favorite. I used a black base with gray, red, terra cotta brown, and a light muddy gray color over that, in that order. To get the top. I made lines of glue on the rim of the jar, when I got to the top, I let go of the trigger on my glue gun and quickly moved the nozzle over to the other side of the jar. Which moves the residue glue string to the other side and creates the spider web pattern. If you don't get a glue string , you can add a little more glue to the top and try again. I continued this all the way around, turning the jar as I went. If you would like to do this, make sure to fill you jar BEFORE you start gluing the top. I didn't paint the glue strands, I felt they looked just fine the color they were. The glue is stronger then it looks over the top but don't expect it to support an obscene amount of weight. It's best to not try to poke through it. I know you want to.

For this one I used my glue gun and made a close together up and down motion to get the top crinkled like that. Then I went over it twice to really get it to stand out. I originally painted this gold to start with but repainted it red. So it's a red base with gold over the top. I ended up using black paint over the lettering and in the creases of the vase to really make them stand out.

  

 

The Armadillo Bile is also one of my favorites, which is funny again because it was also one of my least favorite bottles to begin with. (just like the Spider jar) I used a black base and went over that with a terra cotta brown and a light green. in that order. I just felt like armadillo bile would be green. I guess I'm not totally sure what color bile would be... I was a little heavy handed using the glue gun on the letters so I could get a lot of those really awesome glue strings and give the bottle a nice texture. I also put a ring around the top with glue lines coming down from that.

 

Just throwing it out there. Red over black doesn't show up very well. I tried really hard to get it to look nice and it just wouldn't. Also don't try to water the paint down to do a wash of color, it just peels your base coat off the glass.

 

So to recap quickly:

DIY potion ingredient bottles!

1. Collect bottles, boxes, jars, containers... whatever you want to use
2. Using your glue gun, draw your design and write your label on the bottle. Let it dry for at least 20 minutes.
3. Paint your base coat and let dry for at least an hour
4. Paint additional colors (dark colors first) by dipping your paint brush in color and wiping it on a news paper or paper towel until you get minimal color coming off your brush and paint your bottle and design. Letting it dry completely in between colors.
5. If you'd like to seal the paint on to your bottle, you can spray paint a clear coat over it. They sell matte, semi gloss, and gloss clear coat spray paint so you won't necessarily have to have a glossy finish.
6. Enjoy your new potion ingredient bottles!

 

You can also make some corks and caps for your bottles, you can take cork board and glue it together to create a custom sized plug, instead of trying to find a cork that fits your bottle. You can glue anything you'd like to the tops, fabric, rocks, crystals, figurines.... whatever.  I prefer mine without lids but it's all up to you.

 

As an extra special bonus, here's an Erumpet Horn!

I probably could have done a better job smoothing out the paper underneath. but I was lazy and in the end it gives it a nice textured look.

Today we'll be using home made paper mache!

 

 

You will need some newspaper, tinfoil or something to make a base with. a bowl you aren't afraid to ruin, plain white school glue, and some water. (you won't necessarily ruin the bowl, mine is totally fine and clean, you just don't want to use a really nice bowl for this)

It can be super rough if you have a simple design, it doesn't have to be perfect

You'll want to cut up some newspaper strips and make a base, I used some tinfoil. If you want to remove your base. wrap it in plastic wrap.Then you'll want to make some paper mache paste. 4 parts regular old white school glue to 1 part water.

 Dip your paper strips into the paste and wrap them around your base. Let it dry in between layers. I only used 3 layers but you can use more or less if you'd like. I'd recommend using a minimum of 2. Smooth it all out and let it dry over night.
If you'd like to remove your base you can use a sissors and cut into your form until you are able to pull it out, then you can smooth a few layers of paper dipped in your paste over the cut to close it up. Let that dry over night as well. I kept my base in, the extra weight wasn't an issue for me because I'm not wearing this horn or trying to attach it to anything.
I used hot glue and made a spiral all the way up my horn, I coated the tip with hot glue, and made little "drips" on the bottom. I painted the entire thing black with terra cotta brown and a muddy gray over the top, in that order. I used the same painting technique as I did with the jars. wiping most of the paint off and very roughly painting over the layers.
Let it dry for a couple hours and you're done!

Let me know if you try these! I'd love to see them!

As always,

Enjoy!

 

Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
~Albus Dumbledore