Bottled Catnip For The Renaissance Faire

Today I played around with labels and tags.  One of the things I’m trying out this year at Pennsic is individual bottles of catnip. 

 

In the interest of repurposing/recycling I stopped at a north side liquor shop, walked across the parking lot to where the railroad tracks passed by on the east side of the building (behind a screen of trees) and picked up two dozen mini-alcohol bottles that had been drunk by underage kids and tossed there to hide the evidence. 

 

Yes, free bottles. Three were even glass instead of plastic, and all but one had screw on caps.  I took them home, washed them up, clipped the little dangling metal ring off (the ring kept the cap sealed, it hangs loose now) with the tip of a scissors and peeled as many labels off as I could.  Which unfortunately was as easy as I thought it would be. 

 

No worries, I was entirely redoing the labels anyway.  Now that the bottles were thoroughly cleaned with soapy water I dried them and filled them with powdered catnip.  Each held about 4 tablespoons of catnip which is enough to satisfy at least two cats. 

 

Some simple checking around online with google searches using wording such as ‘turn of the century medicine bottle labels’ I looked at font styles, decorative framing, and wording (man were they archaic!)  I also found three images I liked – an old style drawing of a pocket watch, a black cat with arched back, and a white cat with a monocle.  Those are the three images I went with, there were other options such as a cat in a suit (he wasn’t clear enough when I shrunk it down to 1” tall) and others. 

 

The wording I liked was Professor Puss’s Powdered Elixir, Time For Catnip, So Pure You Can Eat It, “Yowl All Night” Brand Catnip, Authentic Powdered Nip, etc.  And, of course, Let Me Share With You The Drug Of My People. 

 

I did up a template rectangle for the label itself, then made 3 pages of copies of all the text and images, and cut them out in different configurations, using a glue stick to fill each label with variations.  ALL the labels are narrow enough to fit on a strip of 2” wide packing tape, which makes it very easy to just tape each to the bottles. 

 

And as an extra 'oomph' I also made little hanging tags that will be ‘tape laminated’ and hole punched, to tie on the necks of each bottle with metallic gold thread. 

 

The result is spiffy!  Classy! And Kitty Cocktails For Two!