My New Bottle

Materials Needed:

- 1 bottle
- Black spray paint
- Newspaper
- A template of a shape to use
- Masking tape
- Knife

Ok, so I got me 2 nice yellow bottles (read Typical Singaporean on how I got them). I just don’t like the words and design on it. I mean, how nice is BRITISH AMERICAN TOBACCO, when it’s right smack in the middle of the bottle. And on the reverse, WE CHALLENGE YOU TO SHAPE OUR WORLD. Baah..

So I decided to personalize it a little. =)

Ok, firstly you’d need to get a bottle. Some bottle that either 1) you don’t like how it looks, 2) are gonna throw it away or 3) have too much money so you bought a bottle (but that would defeat the purpose of personalizing one urself, since you’d be better off just paying someone to do it). Right, so anyway, you need to decide which parts of the bottle you want to cover up. In my case, it’s 2 areas; the ugly British American Tobacco logo on one side and their slogan/catch-phrase on the other.

I’ve decided to cover the logo area with a star-shaped patch and the slogan area with a nice big rectangle. Nice and plain rectangle so that maybe if I find me a nice Ferrari sticker or something like that (donate anyone?), I could paste it over. So the next step is to find a template that you want. In my case, I’ve got it in a shape of a star. Took it from a picture, edited it to size on Photoshop and printed out. Or you could simply draw by hand if you’re that good, unlike me. Then hollow out the shape and you’ve got urself a template.

That's my template. I got it from a picture that i took of a glow-in-the-dark star on my wall. Had to resize it in Photoshop to get it big enough to cover the whole logo.

That was the easy part. The next part requires you to trace out the shape on masking tape. You might wanna take ur time cos this will really decide how good the shape turns out. Tape the shaped pieces of masking tape over where you want it on the bottle and cover the remaining areas with newspaper and/or masking tape. Be sure that no holes peek out or the paint might get to the bottle.

That's the bottle being all wrapped up and ready to be sprayed. Took quite a while to cut the masking tape into the star shape. Heh, precision engineering..

Ok, now’s the fun part, lay the ground with newspaper and spray away on your bottle. It’s a good idea to make several thin coatings abt 10 sec apart, rather than one elephant skin-thick coating. You get a smoother and more even finish and lower ur chances of getting bubbles on the paint. Leave it to dry for a couple of hours.


The bottles getting a new coat. Woohoo!

Test on a little obscure corner to see if the paint’s dry. Once it is, use a knife and gently run along the edges of your masking tape. This can get taxing esp if your shape is some weird jagged shape but it’ll help to ensure that your new coat of paint don’t get peeled off with the tape. Then, slowly remove the masking tape and walaa! It’s done.. Your own personalized bottle. =)

TADAA!! My bottle with a nice star and a rectangle. Still trying to find a nice sticker to paste over the black patch, but at least the star turned out nice. =) SWEET!

I got bored and after looking at the nice round base, i got this idea. Heh, so imagine you take ur innocent bottle out in the train, then you start drinking from it and as you tilt it, everyone sitting opp you sees the base. haha..