Friday, June 3, 2011

Repurposed Laundry Detergent Bottle

My detached studio is located in the back yard, several feet behind our home. I use this studio for painting, some jewelry design and for stained glass, as well as general crafting. The problem has been the lack of running water. We were on a tight budget when we put up the studio so we didn't install any plumbing. I now use a large laundry detergent bottle, the kind with the spigot (see photo below). I rinsed it out as good as possible and use it as my water supply, especially when I am painting with my watercolors. Warning: This is not a food safe container so please don't put water in it to drink! Here is my Detergent Bottle Makeover...



I didn't like the looks of the bottle particularly, but it was certainly functional. My bottle was bright orange. I decided to decoupage over the bottle with some brown patterned paper I had on hand. This helped, but I wanted to give it a bit more interest, so I painted over the paper after it dried with acrylic paints. After this dried I added another generous coat of decoupage over the entire piece to make it more water tight.




It still looks somewhat like a laundry detergent bottle, but doesn't look so much like a big bright blob of color.





I painted a little different design on each side just for fun. It works great and saves me hauling several small containers of water to my studio. It doesn't spill. I have a ready supply of water when the water I've been using to clean my paint brush gets mucky. Best of all, it is one less piece of plastic in the landfill.


2 comments:

Mosaic Magpie said...

This is a great idea and easier to use than a gallon milk jug. I like the way you gussied it up!
Deb

Magpie's Mumblings said...

Brilliant! So smart to think of using the bottle in the first place, but even smarter to beautify it.