Embossing a bottle

I bought a stamp to add a finishing touch to some rather plain paper labels I made and when I was looking for an ink that wouldn't bleed with a little condensation, I found some embossing ink and embossing powder for a few dollars. I bought it, and using a heat gun, I made a raised Welsh dragon symbol that is semi-permanent(can be removed with a razor or steel wool) on cobalt flip-top bottles that I will be using for some nice gift bottles soon.

Has anyone else embossed bottles in a similar fashion? I had issues getting a "clean" image, which made it take forever to do two or three bottles.

This thread has some nice pictures and examples of what you are talking about, but on a glass carboy.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/marking-your-carboy-63174/

Actually that sounds like the opposite of etching. I'm intrigued!

Got any pics of the finished product?

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/members/jrbaugh/albums/embossing/1161-welsh-dragon-symbol/
Here is the first one I did.

I like it! Was the over-spray look intentional or is it just a trick of the light? Either way it looks good for a first try. I bet with practice you could make some killer complicated designs.

The overspray isn't intentional, I just cannot figure out how to stop it. The embossing powder is really sensitive to static charges and I cannot figure out how to fix it and still have a spotless bottle when I apply the powder. You can remove the overspray after setting the powder with heat just by rubbing the bottle with a towel or paper towel, and the tiny bit left can be scraped off fairly easily because it wasn't set as well with heat. This attempt was the second one, but I only have those two bottles laying around.

I'm not sure which one I like better, the embossment or the etching.

The etching is really cool looking, I just grabbed this to experiment with. I will have to get some of that etching cream next time I am at a store that has it.

I would imagine a larger design would be easier to clean up. That or make a stencil of sorts out of tape or even just paper that you can wet and stick to the bottle. This way any extra material should be easy to remove.

I'm not sure if we are on the same page about how I did this. I used a rubber stamp, a pad of ink, and a powder. Just like those glitter glue things kids make in elementary school, except the glue is put down using the rubber stamp, the powder is poured on, the excess is poured off, and the powder is melted/set with a heat gun. Was that how you were picturing it?

I got slightly better results later by tilting the bottle about 75 degrees and pouring the powder on that away. Much less extra sticks at that angle.

Right since the whole purpose is to get the powder on the bottle I was thinking masking the areas you don't want covered then inking and pouring that way would give you a cleaner design.

Maybe, but the only areas I have trouble with are right next to the stamp area, and making a mask that tight around the stamp area then stamping in that area would be much more difficult than just using a paint brush to remove the small powdered areas before heat gunning it. Which I plan to do.

I envisioned doing this once per bottle on my nice fliptops and not having to do it again for a long time, but I'm afraid this will just mean it will be that much harder to get back the empties.

jrbaugh said:

I envisioned doing this once per bottle on my nice fliptops and not having to do it again for a long time, but I'm afraid this will just mean it will be that much harder to get back the empties.

Click to expand...

So true, lol.

Well you've given me a partial idea for my 50th birthday/5 year barleywine label.

There's going to be a big embossed gold 50 in a circle (maybe of barley sheaves and hopcones) at the top on the bottle. In fact I'm thinking of having a half circle indentation on the paper label so the embossed border is framed by the rest of the label.