Potion Bottles

[Nytmare]

Over the years, I've gotten into the habit of making at least one Christmas gift a year, usually for one of the gamers in my immediate circle of friends or family. This summer I found a bunch of cork topped "potion" bottles in a local craft store chain that kick started the gift-making portion of my brain.

I spent a couple of months picking up odds and ends and kinda playing around with what I wanted to do with them. The gifts were going to be for my sister's family o' gamers, and in the end, what I tried to do was come up with four different potions that kinda meshed with the types of characters they each liked to play.



The four potions are Remove Curse (yellow), Polymorph (blue), Heroism (orange), and Rage (red). The liquid is mineral oil, colored with candy coloring. I wasn't originally planning on capping them with wax, but the mineral oil ended up leaching right through the cork.

http://i.imgur.com/A8tIy

 

[Gilladian]

Pretty!

My niece made "stained glass" bottles by coloring mod-podge with food color, then pouring it in the bottles, swirling it around, pouring off the excess, and letting it air-dry. Of course, you can't put anything liquid into her bottles, but they do look pretty! I figure mine will get clear glass beads and a silk flower or three tucked into it, and put on the mantle.

 

[Nytmare]

Some of the other things I had been contemplating putting into them had been a mix of different viscosity oils, water beads, or a solution that would grow crystals.

 

[Gilladian]

Ohh! the crystal idea would be splendid. The ones I'm familiar with, though, (rock candy sugar and laundry blueing) grow "out" of the solution, not in it. For the blueing crystals, you normally put solution in a pie plate, and add either a soft piece of brick, or a charcoal cube for the solution to wick up into and then evaporate, leaving the crystal behind, high and dry.

 

[BriarMonkey]

Ooooo! Those are neat. Nicely done.


(I wish I had creative abilities...)

 

[Nytmare]

There's some kind of non toxic salt crystal solution that breaks down in sunlight and reforms again when the temperature drops back down. I'll research it when I get back from my vacation and have an actual computer at my disposal.

 

[Gilladian]

That sounds cool! I'd love to know what it is. If it really is pretty non-toxic, I might be able to use the idea in a craft at the Library. We're doing an "underground" Summer Reading Club theme for 2013 and that is right up the alley we're headed.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Art and Craft stores sometimes will have mini bottles, also Amazon has them.

 

[BriarMonkey]

Art and Craft stores sometimes will have mini bottles, also Amazon has them.

As well, the floral or craft department in many large stores (Target, Walmart) have differing styles of bottles and glasswares.

 

[Gilladian]

Getting bottles isn't a problem; at the Library, anyway, the problem always comes down to budget. When you have 8-10 programs to do over a summer, and you have a limited budget that means you can't spend more than, say $100 on any given program (including everything from tablecloths to food to crafts to door prizes), and you have to plan for a minimum of 20 attendees, you have to work cheap. If I have to spend $5 per kid on craft materials, I've way overspent!

For example, one program I'd love to do is an Angry Birds game. It involves building cardboard box towers, hiding green balloons in the towers with pig faces drawn on them by the teens, and then launching variously colored balls with bird faces on them via a towel-launcher (two kids hold the towel, the third pulls it back and aims, then the holders fling it forwards...). Problem is that just buying the balls might put us over budget. If we can't find ways to re-use them to reduce expense in future programs... it's out the window. If we're lucky, the children's librarian will go halfsies on them with us and can use them herself sometimes.