wine labels for home vintners (mean hermit edition)

My "spirited" family is full of home brewers and vintners, a hobby many seem to have inherited from my grandpa. Late in life he developed an interest in making his own alcoholic concoctions; if you knew him, you know this was just one of the quirky and amazing things about him from a field of thousands.

This year my aunt and uncle made both wine and beer, and phoned in to ask me to do a little run of wine labels like I did a while back. I riffed off of the "Mean Old Hermit" sign that has hung on the gate of their rural property since time immemorial. This is what I came up with (the names here have been redacted for privacy):

A Google search turned up an old 1920s (copyright free) image of an old bootlegger simultaneously smoking a pipe, brandishing weapons and holding a liquor bottle. Perfect. I wasn't there to see my aunt and uncle open the package, but they tell me there was much laughter.

To make the two-toned sketched image, I used a very fine-lined drawing tool in Illustrator and, with my pen/stylus and drawing tablet in a separate layer, I drew over the highlights. When I was done, I dropped in the black background and added typography (fonts are 1942 Report, Rustic Regular {from Dover}, and Cavalcade).

Once I'd printed them out on label paper using my ink jet (because the local print shop took five days to return my e-mail), I gilded the 2012 using a gold paint pen and sprayed the labels with Mod Podge acrylic spray. I let them dry and air out for a couple of days before cutting them apart and packaging them up.

A note: I've been told by my aunt that labeling is done according to the year of the grapes, so 2012, not 2013, is the correct vintage in this case. The wine aged for a year before being given out as gifts.

I call the wine "house red" on the labels because the grape vines grow on the front of their house. Not accurate by wine industry standards, but not an issue for their friends and family.

I hope if you're a beginning Adobe Illustrator user, you can make sense of the above description of my process (specifically the part where I sketched over the image highlights). If not, and you're interested in learning more, drop me a note and let me know if I can make things clearer. Please remember to respect my copyrighted work (anything on this blog), but feel free to use any methods as a springboard for your own designs.

And if you want wine or beer labels of your own but don't want to learn a new program to design some, I freelance! Just contact me and I can work you up some wine labels of your very own for a really reasonable rate. Better yet, after an initial design fee, I can even send you digital files for five years worth of dated labels to print from.

Thanks for reading! 

the fanciest thing in my house

This is the fanciest thing in my house.

Similar projects have been all over Pinterest for awhile, based on a $300 West Elm version (which I've read is based on a $1500 version by designer Vernor Panton). And I really liked them.

Most of all, as usual, I like the idea of making something over with inexpensive materials. In my case, I spent $2 on an old lampshade, $2 on a spool of steel wire, and $1.50 on a roll of wax paper.

I wish I knew who to credit with the innovation of using an upside down lampshade, because I think it's pretty darn smart. I've seen similar versions made with hanging fruit baskets, Ikea picture frames, and wreath forms, but I don't know the evolution of this project (which came first, and who spun off their project from the original?).

Here are a couple of the inspiration pins for this project: this one from Design Sponge (made with a hanging planter basket, ribbon, and hot glue); this one, from Make House a Home (made with a lampshade and stitched strands); and this one, from A Happy Place Called Home (Ikea frame and jump rings).

I did what I usually do; I picked the elements I liked from different versions of the chandelier (the upside down lampshade, the wire instead of stitching) and filtered out the ideas I didn't like, or that I thought made the project too complicated or expensive. And then I added in some of my own spin.

But let's start at the beginning. With an ordinary boob light.

I blogged last summer about my guest room make-over, but though a bunch of things have been changed or modified since that last update, I hadn't touched the light fixture. In fact, I shot around it when I wrote that post. And then, in August, I saw a couple of faux capiz chandeliers on the Young House Love blog's Pinterest Challenge (see numbers 6 & 184). I did a little bit of research and turned up a bunch more versions (as mentioned and pinned above). Then I gathered my materials. In addition to a roll of wax paper and a spool of 20 gauge steel wire, I turned up a tapered lamp shade at the thrift store on a 50% off day (I paid $2 after discount).

Tear off all the fabric and add an extra row of wrapped wire, and you end up with this:

I ironed three layers of wax paper together to make the "shell" material. And to a couple of spots, I added a very, very few crayon shavings between the layers to make a very small amount of tie-in to the room colors. Rather than punch circles out of the waxed paper, I cut mine into varying sizes of rectangles. And rather than stitching the shells together, I punched holes in either end with a teensy hole punch and hooked trains of the pieces together with jump rings made from the steel wire.

(Making jump rings with wire and pliers is way cheaper than buying jump rings ready-made, but is also more time consuming. Plan your own project accordingly.)

As is my pattern, I got only partway through with one tier, and retired the chandelier to the closet for a little while, to get it off the table. And then I got sidetracked working on Halloween costumes, Christmas presents, hallway painting, and birthday party stuff.

Earlier this month, when I finally pulled it out of the closet and went to hang it up (because a partially-finished chandelier is harder to ignore when it's hanging right in your face), it looked like this:

I buckled down, and put in some good, solid blocks of time to getting it finished. It took approximately 72 chains of 5 shells for the top-most tier, 56 chains of 4 for the middle tier, and 48 chains of 3 for the bottom tier.

It took a bit of time. And when it was finished, it looked a little like this in the room (flash on, with Photoshop filters added).

Here's how it hangs from the ceiling, with two cup hooks (the chandelier is super-light, but I may add two additional cup hooks, just in case).

And here it is, done . . .

. . . glowing . . .

. . . and in daylight . . .

I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Have you made one of these yet? Isn't it amazing what you can do with paper?

Hey, you can link to your paper projects in the comments below. Thanks for dropping by!


Edited to add: The original UL-rated fixture is still in place, with low-wattage compact fluorescent bulbs. The wax paper structure sits a little below the ceiling, and a couple of inches away from the glass shade. Plus, it's in the guest room, which means the light's not on very often. We're pretty safe from any fire danger, but I'm definitely on the alert!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)


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