Collage with wine labels

If you love vintage papers and vintage design, I'm sure you've noticed how beautiful wine labels can be. Maybe it's even crossed your mind to think about collaging with a wine label or two.

My husband often likes to have wine with his dinner, so we often have a bottle or two in the cupboard. I decided I wanted to collage with some labels and began setting bottles aside. First I had to figure out how to get the labels off in one piece.

How to remove a wine label

Here's how I remove them:

1. Boil enough water to fill a bottle.
2. Find a piece of wax paper or the backing paper of a large sticker where you can temporarily store your removed label.
3. Place your wine bottle in the sink.
4. Pour the boiling water into the bottle.
5. Wait 3 to 5 minutes.
6. Poke at a corner to see if your label will start to peel off.
7. If it start to come off easily, great! If it doesn't, give it a few more minutes and try again.
8. If it doesn't come off after 5 to 10 minutes, it probably won't. Some labels are used with a glue that will not loosen with heat.

Examples of collaging with wine labels

Once I had the idea that I wanted to create a gluebook specifically with wine labels, it really motivated me to get going. Here are some of the pages I created.

Textbook. Along with this label, my other piece of paper I was working with was the black and white rectangles on the left. There is one pink rectangle, and that, along with the blue in the Textbook label, is how I chose the color scheme.

Domaine Carneros. This one I assembled with a collage art assignment. If you'd like to see how I put this one together, you can watch my YouTube video I did of this collage.

Unshackled. Ok, I'll admit it. I bought this wine simply because the label talked me into it. It reminds me of the cryptex in the Davinci Code. I paired the label with an old piece of currency. I'm not sure why. I just thought they worked well together.

Ledson. I was at a friend's house, and I asked her if I could take the empty bottle home with this label on it. I love that mansion illustration. Here I just surrounded it with pretty things like flowers and a blue bird. The postage stamps bring out the colors of the flowers.

Chateauneuf-du-Pape. This label I didn't find too interesting, but I noticed the C and P letters were in a maroon color. I matched that with some pattern paper on the left and added things until I thought it was complete.

Zuccardi. Here's another wine I bought because of the label and because I had never tasted a wine from Argentina before. This label is all about purple and gold, so I looked for papers to bring those colors out.

Francis Coppola. Black and gold. That's basically it. I added some pink because I needed a third color. I've also got a bill of Egyptian currency in there. 

Here's a quick YouTube video of how I remove labels off of a bottle, and how I collage with it. I hope you enjoy it and it inspires you to try removing one or more.

https://youtu.be/udgSjlsIOYU