Ideas You Get From Summer Vacation

At the beginning of the summer my family and I traveled to the beach in South Carolina. During that time we visited the local flea market to look around and see what little bargains we could find. I noticed some very cute bottles there that were probably meant for keeping olive oil. The bottles had spouts on the top for pouring and were all hand painted. Each bottle was priced at $15.00. It was tempting to buy one but I new I could probably make it myself.

I was pretty sure I knew exactly what I would need to make it but wasn't sure where I would find that particular type of bottle. A couple of weeks later I happened to find the bottle I needed in Walmart in the kitchen gadgets department, priced at $2.98-so I bought two. One for olive oil and one for vegetable oil. How handy! Keep them right next to the stove and they are always at hand and ready to use. I like that idea because I use lots of olive oil when I cook.


Here is what I needed to make my bottles.

1. Glass paint


2. paint brushes


3. clear gloss
   and..........one black sharpie paint marker

Notice that both bottles have the spouts on the top?

Thinking about what I wanted to paint onto the bottles I decided that a pile of small olives on each side of the bottle would work for the olive oil. I also thought that would look cute. The other bottle was going to hold vegetable oil so I painted a hot red pepper on it (yeah, I have a thing for painted red peppers). One pepper on two sides and a small vine on the other two. I applied a gloss over both to preserve them. Here's the result.

They actually look very much like the original ones I fell in love with at the beach. Tomorrow I'll add vegetable oil and olive oil to both. Just for some added flavor I'll be adding some garden herbs to the olive oil.

Lucky for me I had several colors of glass paint in the house so the total cost for both bottles was about $6.00.

For those of you that signed up for the Lowe's free quarterly magazine, you will enjoy seeing the great ideas they have this month. They have a segment on chalkboard paint and also whiteboard paint (which I didn't even know existed). What a great idea for the back of a teenager's door or even in the kitchen! They can write all their "stuff" on the whiteboard right behind their door. Check it out and sign up. It's free!

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