Invitation In a Bottle

I've been working on an invitation for a client....

It started out as an idea for the theme of his 40th birthday.....

He loves the beach, and his party is going to be at a very gorgeous beach front restaurant/guest house in Sydney....

He wanted the theme to be "washed up"... but I convinced him that that sounded a bit negative - so why not make it "washed up... and lovin' it!"

Which he did.

The concept is a 'washed up' bottle, with the invitation inside....

I started with some bottles from a dollar-store... which I took apart and gave an aged look:

I rusted all the metal parts on the bottle, as well as the extra bits and pieces I was going to use in the design. I sanded the glass with wet/dry sandpaper, then sprayed with a frosting spray.

I also created some nice rusty charms by collecting old bottle caps, hammering them, and drilling a hole to attach them to the rest of my things.

Then I tea stained some watercolour paper, which will be used as the rolled up invitation inside the bottle.... lots of work here! My kitchen looks like a tie-dye factory.

I collected sticks, bottle caps, and even found some rusty wire on my scavenger hunt.... I was so excited by the wire, that I went to the hardware shop and bought a roll, twisted small pieces of wire into some sculptural shapes to be used as hooks for my final creations...

And here they are.....

Not sure if you can see, but I've got fishing net, driftwood, fishing tackle(rusted), fishing line sinker, rusty bottle cap, sea sponge, rusty wire, twine, and starfish all on there....

There is sand and shells in the bottom of the bottle. The invitation is printed on the hand dyed paper, and wrapped up with twine and inserted in the bottle. On the outside of the bottle there is a tage saying "washed up" and When you pull out the scroll invitation from inside the bottle, there is a tag attached saying "and lovin' it..."

The piece-de-resistance..... we have organised a sexy mermaid to hand deliver the invitations to each of the guests! I'll try to get a photo to finish this story!