The Making of "Laundry Detergent"

First I cut several bottle-shaped foam core blanks... one will be the finished bottle and the rest were cut apart and used as a multiple-section templates (I call them puzzle templates).

I positioned the first template that covers everything but the bottle cap, weighted it down then sprayed the first layer of paint... silver.

Once it was dry, I covered the cap section with another puzzle piece and sprayed again lightly with black.

This created a separation between the highlight and shadow sections on the cap.

After waiting for the cap section to dry I covered it with the corresponding template piece and took off the piece that covered the rest of the bottle.

That section got a coat of Larkspur Blue.

After more drying time, another template piece is put into position...

...and a layer of Deep Blue is misted on.

Then more Larkspur is misted on to soften the darker blue in some areas. It is left dark in others... this blends the colors together a bit more.

One more template to go.

Using white paint, the brightest highlights are applied using this template. No weights are used because a little overspray is helpful in softening the edges of the white areas.

Now all it needs is a little detail work with paint markers and a printed label and it's done.

Here is one of the other two bottles that needed to be made for the finished sign. The same process and the same templates were used to make the other bottles.

Here is the finished sign sitting in the shop. It's pretty big as you can see. It completely takes up two drafting tables. I created the labels (blocked out for legal reasons) by scanning the actual labels on the product, then enlarging and printing them out. No need to reinvent the wheel here. Then the printed labels were mounted using spray adhesive.



Here are some detail shots of the finished bottles.



This close-up shows some of the paint marker work.