Decorative Dish Soap

There are certain things you don't really know about yourself until you live with someone. Everyone has their quirks and while I am no neat freak (far from it), I am a bit obsessive about keeping dishes from sitting in the sink and my counter top clear. People say you should have serious talks about kids and finances before you marry but nobody warns you of dish washing. I am an instant scrubber/washer and my husband gives dishes a lengthy soak before scrubbing and rinsing. Because of this he requires the dish soap to be readily accessible (on the counter top by sink) while I like to hide my dish soap under the sink as fast as humanly possible (I told you, I'm a bit obsessive). A wise person once said "marriage is about compromise,"*  so I set off to find a way to keep the dish soap handy without me being tempted to squirrel it away.

* Another wise person once said "Love is a Battlefield" but we'll stick with compromise for the sake of this argument.

I keep a lot of containers to re-use. Most of the time I don't know what I'll be using them for so I wash and dry them, then store them away. I saved this squiggley glass bottle just because it was different.

Before painting glass I wipe it down with some rubbing alcohol and let it air dry.

Any type of glass container will do. This one happens to be from Rose's Cocktail Infusions Blue Raspberry Martini, if you must know.

Here are the supplies I needed:

~ Stencils 

~ Pouncers (or brushes)

~ Stencil adhesive

~ Craft paint (I use Martha Stewart's multi-surface paint from Michaels )

The letter stencils happened to be self-adhesive so I only needed to line them up where I wanted on the bottle.

The usual rules with stenciling: A little goes a long way. 

No matter how careful, mistakes can happen. The great thing about stenciling on glass is that most mistakes can be removed just by using a toothpick.

Stencil adhesive is not always necessary. I have used painter's tape to hold stencils in place previously but this particular star stencil had thin cut outs and I wanted to make sure the paint would stay within the stencil.

Most stencils can be cleaned with windex and a paper towel.

I put stars above and below the lettering as well as along the back of the bottle.

Once all the painting was done, I took the bottle outside and sprayed it with a clear sealant.





So, at the end of the day. I did concede to leave the dish soap on the sink counter top. But instead of this:

We now have this:

You can paint any glass bottle you have to hold dish soap, olive oil, or anything you want to keep handy when cleaning or cooking and still keep your counter top looking a little fancy.

The soap bottle has been out for a whole week and I haven't attempted to hide it once. 

~ B