Ship In a Bottle Card

When I first saw the ship in a bottle card, created and posted by JulieH, I was totally blown away. I thought it was the coolest looking card I'd seen in a long time, and of course I wanted to try one too. But when I went over to www.craftersdelight.co.uk to purchase the template, I was disappointed because I couldn't find it anywhere on the site. I really had my heart set on making this card for my dad...in his younger years, building ships in tiny glass bottles was a hobby of his and I have always been so amazed with his beautifully detailed creations. I thought this card would be perfect for his upcoming birthday. So after spending a long time staring at the photos Julie had posted, I decided I would try and wing it. Ha, ha...yeah, I'm nutz. Anyway, you definitely should go take a look at Julie's card, because it is truly awesome. Mine is my lame attempt to re-create it without a template. If you read Julie's post on this card you'll see that she ran into some difficulties constructing the "bottle" even with the template...so I pretty much figured I was up for quite a challenge.

The boat was easy. The Mayflower cut is from the My World cartridge, cut several times at 2-3/4" and layered. The bottle was another story all together. Everything was guess-timated based on Julie's photos. Basically it was just "cut and create as you go". For the body of the bottle, I cut a rectangular piece of clear shrink plastic with tabs which I tried to tuck into slits cut in the base card stock. The shrink plastic was way too rigid and difficult to work with. For the neck and bottom of the bottle I used pieces cut from a plastic pillowbox I had, which was a little more flexible and cooperative. A funnel shaped piece connected to a smaller rectangular piece were used to create the neck of the bottle and an circle shaped piece folded in half for the bottle bottom. I used double stick tape to connect all the pieces and a lot of twine and gold foil ribbon to hide all the seams and tape. The finished size of the card was about 8.5 x 5.5".

The end result was kind of messy looking, but okay I guess. I wish I had a cork like Julie did to cork my bottle too. I'm pretty sure I'll never be making this again unless I get ahold of the template. Either that, or maybe I will try using a plastic water bottle cut in half lengthwise next time....any brave souls up to the challenge?