I
love Halloween! I have always decorated a little bit but two and a half years ago when we bought our house I was very excited for Halloween, I just didn't have a lot of decorations.
The first Halloween we had our house, we didn't decorate much because we had a kid and we took her trick-or-treating.
Last year, we didn't decorate for the same reason, however what happened was, our five year old decided she wanted to go downtown for trick-or-treating but afterward said she wanted to "sell candy," (pass out candy).
This year, we asked early what she wanted to do. She wanted to do the same as last year. So we planned to decorate the yard and have a projector.
I found DIY potion bottles on Pinterest and started my plan!
First, I collected bottles for about a month. After we used up our syrup, I rinsed out the bottle, after kiddo drank milk from a fast food restaurant, I cleaned that out, old pill bottles, etc.
After I collected them and cleaned them, I bought some paints. I purchased them at Menards, but finding craft acrylic paints is very easy. I got one brown and one silver. I also grabbed a can of chalkboard pain. I used the spray kind and found that next time, it might be better to use the paint on kind because it was messy and smelly. I grabbed my hot glue gun, some paint brushes, and some newspaper and went to work!
The first step in the actual creation of the bottles was to use the hot glue to label each bottle. Here you see "Eye Of Newt."
I spray painted the bottles with the chalkboard paint (although next time I think I will use the paint on kind, this was messy and smelled bad and I ended up going outside and putting on gloves to do the rest of them).
I used some brown paint and a small paint brush after the chalkboard paint was dry.This gave it the effect of an old bottle. I used a small bristled brush which worked okay, but definitely worked better after the paint had hardened on it and I dipped it in fresh paint so it streaked a bit. I also found later that a foam brush worked really well too.
I completed the bottles by painting the caps silver and brushing them a bit to look like the silver was old.
Here are some of my finished products. My husband thinks the "Eye of Newt" looks too much like a syrup bottle but I felt it looked cool still. The "Eyeballs" and "Mandrake Draught" are two of my favorites.
My absolute favorites though? The "Bat Toes" (a small medicine bottle) and "Unicorn Blood" (an old coffee creamer bottle). My husband's favorite? The "Unicorn Blood." I don't think these are fabulous, but definitely good for a DIY and adds something to our outdoor Halloween set up!
