Upcycled Inspirational Bottle Art Dolls

 

I made some cutie pie Art Dolls!  They are fun and colorful and easy to make.  A few weeks back I featured these pretty bottles in my garage sale report:

 

Bottles always make me think of art dolls which have been a good seller for me through the years.  Art dolls are something you can’t buy at the mall!  I try to make mine inspirational and decorate the sides so there is “stuff” to see + inspire the thought “I should get this for                she needs some encouragement right now.”

Most of the items I sell at Sunrose Gallery in Seaside, Oregon are purchased as gifts and that gets my creative juices going to think of themes for gifts.  You never can go wrong with the theme of encouragement!

Earlier this summer I got a 12 x 12 section of bathroom shower pebble tile at a garage sale.

I made a few projects and still had handfuls of tiles left.  Since the pebbles were mostly ovals I got out my clip art faces and covered many of the pebbles with a clip art face. 

 

My idea was to use as many faces as possible and fill up the frame.

 

 

“Celebrate Strong Women”…..I liked the idea, but I had my doubts if anyone would purchase it!  Those doubts caused me to give up on my idea, put the letters back in their container and put the pebbles in a bag.  So a few weeks later when I saw the bottles I thought it would be fun to use some of my “pebble heads”.

 

I guess you could call me a lazy artist because I always use Etsy Shops that sell digital downloads that I can print out.  Etsy is one stop shopping and I can pay for the download and print it out in a matter of minutes.  I found these artsy tag images last night and printed them out to cover the fronts and sides.  I leave the backs empty so there are no distractions to the front….. as the glass is clear.

 

The “journal page” can be left empty or a message can be jotted down.  If I was going to give the “Love this Life” to my friend Sue, I would jot down: “No you’re the cute one!”  That is a thing we “argue” about. LOL

 

I clip sayings and phrases from magazines and have a big box full of them!  That makes it easy to put the bottle art dolls together in a jiffy.  I can make them quickly so I can price them very reasonably…. and someone can afford to give them as a gift!

It is very rewarding to think that something I made was special enough to be a gift! I got a text message last night “Had the cutest sale this weekend.  This guy called from Portland and wanted to buy your 3 dimensional piece “The Whole Zoo”- you know the one.  His girlfriend fell in love with it.  He didn’t want to wait for us to ship it, so on Sunday he drove down from Portland to pick it up!  But poor guy….he said Hwy 26 was packed with people…. it took him 3 hours to get here from Portland.  Oh geez can you imagine?  He must really love his girlfriend!”

 

So my piece of art is now part of a love story!  How cool is that?  I know my bottle Art Dolls won’t sell like hot cakes but they each will be a treasured gift someday.

 

 

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