If you love vintage papers and vintage design, I'm sure you've noticed how beautiful wine labels can be. Maybe it's even crossed your mind to think about collaging with a wine label or two.
My husband often likes to have wine with his dinner, so we often have a bottle or two in the cupboard. I decided I wanted to collage with some labels and began setting bottles aside. First I had to figure out how to get the labels off in one piece.
How to remove a wine label
Here's how I remove them:
- Boil enough water to fill a bottle.
- Find a piece of wax paper or the backing paper of a large sticker where you can temporarily store your removed label.
- Place your wine bottle in the sink.
- Pour the boiling water into the bottle.
- Wait 3 to 5 minutes.
- Poke at a corner to see if your label will start to peel off.
- If it start to come off easily, great! If it doesn't, give it a few more minutes and try again.
- If it doesn't come off after 5 to 10 minutes, it probably won't. Some labels are used with a glue that will not loosen with heat.
Examples of collaging with wine labels
Once I had the idea that I wanted to create a gluebook specifically with wine labels, it really motivated me to get going. Here are some of the pages I created.
Textbook. Along with this label, my other piece of paper I was working with was the black and white rectangles on the left. There is one pink rectangle, and that, along with the blue in the Textbook label, is how I chose the color scheme.
Domaine Carneros. This one I assembled with a collage art assignment. If you'd like to see how I put this one together, you can watch my YouTube video I did of this collage.
Unshackled. Ok, I'll admit it. I bought this wine simply because the label talked me into it. It reminds me of the cryptex in the Davinci Code. I paired the label with an old piece of currency. I'm not sure why. I just thought they worked well together.
Ledson. I was at a friend's house, and I asked her if I could take the empty bottle home with this label on it. I love that mansion illustration. Here I just surrounded it with pretty things like flowers and a blue bird. The postage stamps bring out the colors of the flowers.
Chateauneuf-du-Pape. This label I didn't find too interesting, but I noticed the C and P letters were in a maroon color. I matched that with some pattern paper on the left and added things until I thought it was complete.
Zuccardi. Here's another wine I bought because of the label and because I had never tasted a wine from Argentina before. This label is all about purple and gold, so I looked for papers to bring those colors out.
Francis Coppola. Black and gold. That's basically it. I added some pink because I needed a third color. I've also got a bill of Egyptian currency in there.
Here's a quick YouTube video of how I remove labels off of a bottle, and how I collage with it. I hope you enjoy it and it inspires you to try removing one or more.
https://youtu.be/udgSjlsIOYU