DIY Bottle Label Project

[_MementoMori_]

I confess that I'm a hopeless aesthete. It's part of what initially drew me to wetshaving. I love looking at all of my brushes, razors, and cool aftershave bottles. I feel as if I'm swept away into another, simpler time when I'm in my shave den.

Some products that are essential to a great shave, though, don't lend themselves to this aesthetic. Dickinson's Witch Hazel, for example, comes in an ugly plastic bottle. Of course this can just be kept in the medicine cabinet, but I like all of my supplies within an arm's reach while shaving. I came up with this as a solution:

1. Get ahold of some nice, plain glass bottles with sturdy caps
2. Go to urbanfonts.com and find a font that suits your desired aesthetic
3. Open Word and type up your labels with the desired font, size, etc.
4. Print the labels
5. Stain them with tea or coffee to make them look more "aged"
6. Tear them out to create rough edges as opposed to clean-cut edges
7. Affix them to the your bottle(s) with a glue stick

I used the Latin name for witch hazel because I think it sounds cool. I also used the Italian name for alcohol just so it would sort of match. My font is "IL Shakefest," which is designed to look like fonts in use in Elizabethan England. If anyone has any question on how to do this, feel free to shoot me a PM and I'll go into more detail. I really like how it turned out.

 

[pezdaddy]

Looks great! Two questions: where are your bottles from, and what font did you use from urbanfont?

 

[_MementoMori_]

The "acolico" bottle is a Boots bottle that contained, I believe, a bath gel belonging to my wife.

The "Hamamelis Virginiana" bottle was bubble bath as well. I can't remember the brand, but it was Ylang Ylang scented. I got it at T.J. Maxx, which is a spectacular place to shop for this sort of thing. Ditto with Marshalls.

The font is "Il Shakefest." Urbanfonts has literally hundreds of fonts that would look great for this purpose though.

 

[cooncatbob]

Regular Milk works better then stick glue to apply the labels and is easy to remove.
I used to be a home brewer and found it to work best, just dip the label in the milk then squeegee in out on the bottle.

 

[_MementoMori_]

Wow.. really?

That's fascinating! I'm going to go and replace those labels with milk glue!

 

[JPDyson]

Also, FontSquirrel.com

 

[maxman]

This is a great idea! nice job. I detest how some of the bottles look. My shave den looks kind of a rat's nest right now. This idea might just give it the class that it deserves.

 

[Vlad]

Very, very cool. This will be great for the mouthwash bottle, too.

 

[dpmtherrien]

Very good idea, gives things a nice look.