Earth Friendly Water Bottle - Give a Hoot!

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I live in Concord, Massachusetts - a very historic town.  At Town Meeting this year, Concord voted to ban the sale of bottled water in town, making history yet again.  The ban would take effect in 2011 - and is rather controversial...  Here is a LINK for more information about the ban.

On my last trip to Costco, I found these new bottles - just the thing for filling with your own tap water.  The set of three was less than $20 and there was another set in different colors - every family member could have their own color.  They have a locking top and a carabiner to hook the bottle to a bag or belt loop.  I think I may be seeing a lot of these around town - so why not give them a little personalization?

I set up a mat with all sorts of flowers and sayings from the Give a Hoot cartridge.  What a perfect cartridge for a project like this!  it is full of "earth-friendly" sayings and images.  By using Design Studio, I could plan out the sizes and fit quite a few shapes on a small section of the mat to conserve my vinyl.

Here is the vinyl after cutting - if you look carefully you can see the images and words.  I did a "kiss cut" which means the vinyl layer is cut through but the backing stays intact.This makes it much easier to remove the cutouts.

Here is another photo to show you how the "kiss cut" works.  the entire sheet of vinyl can be lifted from the mat and the individual items lifted off the backing.  The settings I use to do this are medium pressure (3), medium speed (3), and blade depth 4.

I applied the vinyl cuts to the water bottle without too much thought about placement - just a happy random assortment of sayings and flowers!

For an alternative, I tried a more formal design.  First, I determined a good size for the image by wrapping a piece of vinyl around the bottle.  I cut a piece four inches square for my design.
 

I used a frame and initial from the Storybook cartridge - here you can see the kiss cut piece of vinyl.  This piece was the Oracal vinyl.  The yellow vinyl was Wall-Pops vinyl.  I find the Wall-Pops to be more forgiving when you are working with it.  The Oracal had a stronger adhesive and was more difficult to lift and reapply without tearing.

 As a matter of fact, I did tear the bottom section and decided that just the top would work out fine - a little less formal.  It would be fun to do these for a group - adding names or decorations that represent each person.

I am not sure how well the vinyl will hold up to a lot of handling.  I have had vinyl Cricut bugheads (made with regular Wall-Pops) on my car for a couple of years and they have survived rainstorms and car washes and are only a little worse for wear.  The nice thing is that the vinyl is not expensive so you could redo the bottle as needed and change up your decorations!

This is a quick and simple project.  It is a lot of fun to figure out which decorations to use.  I think it would be a great activity to do with kids!