Altered bottle by LORI WOODS

Hello Mad Scrappers! Today I have a little altered bottle for you with a cheat for stencilling on non-flat surfaces! 

Firstly, make sure your bottle is nice and clean and then give it a few thin coats of white gesso to prime the surface. While you're waiting for that to dry, take a sheet of thin paper like tissue or rice paper. It doesn't matter what it looks like as you'll be painting over it. Then get your stencil (I used the Tim Holtz Gothic stencil) and apply some modelling paste through the stencil onto the tissue paper. I like to use Finnabair's paste as it's nice and lightweight and flexible when it dries. Try to stencil a big enough area to cover your bottle's surface but it doesn't matter if you do it in patches rather than a full sheet as you'll be applying it to the bottle in sections.

Once everything was dry, I tore the stencilled tissue paper into pieces so it was easier to apply to the curves of the bottle, and glued this down with soft matte gel. I gathered together some flowers left over from other projects, diamond pebbles and a small frame from the Grungy frames mould, and glued these to the bottle with heavy body gel. I filled in the gaps around the frame with some mini art stones and soft matte gel, and let everything dry completely.

After another quick coat of white gesso to prime the embellishments, it was time to start painting. I started with Coral, Carmine and Crimson liquid acrylics, applying these in different areas and spritzing with water to ensure the paint ran into all the nooks and crevices. I then took some mint impasto paint and dry brushed this over all the surfaces to highlight the details and create a contrast with the brighter acrylic colours. 

For the final touches, I filled the inside of the frame with glass beads to create some interesting texture and stamped out a star to go in the centre. I used Indian pink wax to colour the star and to add some highlights to details on the bottle.

I hope this gives you some inspiration on how to alter different objects and make stencilling round items much easier!