Decorating Bottles for a Vendor Event

This past weekend I did my first vendor event with my Simply said business. It was at Haymarket Day, in down-town Haymarket, Virginia, on an incredibly gorgeous day. As you would expect on a sunny, warm Saturday afternoon, the masses were out. Who doesn't love a parade, beer garden, and bands?  And over 250 venders?!!  I do, I do!

I had the great fortune to be placed right next to the kettle corn truck. Oh yeah - a mile of people waiting in line to get their grub on, all the while eyeing up my Simply Said goods! They'd walk right on over after getting their giant bag-o-popcorn, and say, over and over again, "What's Simply Said?"

 By person #1,345 I had gotten pretty good with my response. And a jar full of registration slips proves it. But seriously, I had a lot of very interested folks tell me they want to host a party. I even took a few orders right on the spot. And I sold about a dozen of my fun, little decorated bottles.

I made the bottles in an attempt to try and make up some of my investment for the booth. Normally I wouldn't spend that kind of money on a vendor event, but, I know I have to grow my biz outside of my lovely community, and figured this was the biggest show I could afford to do. Especially if these bottles sold like the kettle corn did!

I made thirty of them. I did not sell thirty, however. The Christmas ones didn't move. Guess when its sunny and 80-some degrees outside no one is thinking about Dec. 25.  They did love the candy corn bottles, though!! (kettle corn, candy corn…this is starting to sound like a sponsored post)

I should have made all of them with the white/orange/yellow combo of colors. But, I wanted to give people variety! So, I made these, too…

It's okay, I have two more vendor events coming this holiday season, so I hope that the festive designs will be in demand then.

So, I've had a lot of questions on how to make these lovelies, so here ya go:

1) Drink a lot of wine! Or better yet, host a Simply Said party with me, and let your guests drink all the wine. (psst…drunk ladies like to buy stuff)  Kidding. Kind of.

2) Once you have some empty bottles, soak them to loosen the adhesive on the labels. I soaked for about an hour, then scraped the labels off. I got all remaining goo off of them with mineral spirits. Rubbed it on, and wiped them clean.

3) I bought cans of Valspar gloss spray paint at Walmart. I took the bottle outside and set them upright on a flattened cardboard box. I sprayed them each with three coats.

HINTS FOR SPRAY-PAINTING

-hold the can a few inches away from the bottle at all times

-spray using even strokes back and forth

-do not expect to have complete coverage on the first coat - its better to have very light coats

-if you spray in one spot for too long, you will get a drips

-go around the bottle in a circle - spray from 12 o'clock, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock

-let each coat dry before adding a second or third coat

-when overlapping layers of color (for instance in the candy corn bottle) spray with a fine light mist at the point where they overlap for seamless blending

-spray on warm sunny days and a bottle dries in a matter of minutes

-let paint cure for at least a day before attempting to decorate with vinyl designs or accessories

4) After I sprayed the bottles, I let them cure for 2 days in the garage. Then I applied Simply Said vinyl designs to each. All that entails is rubbing and removing paper!

5) Next I embellished with ornaments, ribbon, jewelry and other pretty little trinkets. 

6) For a decorative touch to make these bottles look like vases, I go into the woods, fetch a bunch of twigs and skinny branches, and spray-paint them as well. Then I pop them into the tops of the bottles. Done!

The grocery store gave me a few wine boxes and they made it so easy for traveling with the bottles. No clinking around, or worrying about dinged paint jobs.

So there ya have it, instructions for decorating your own wine bottles. Drink and be merry my friends! See ya at the next show!