The alchemist's bottle cabinet

Etagère en carton et papier mâché peinte. Détails moulés en pâte de papier, dorés au doigt à la cire. Mortiers et pilons en porcelaine trouvés à un vide-grenier.

Shelves out of cardboard covered with papier mâché and paint. Details molded out of paper paste and accented with brass wax gilt. Old lab mortars and pestles from a garage sale.
Illustrations on the bottles: ancient medical illustrations (courtesy of the National Library of Medecine, www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/home.html), watch face and animal engravings courtesy of Cathe Holden (http://justsomethingimade.com/)The complete lab, iteration 1/Le laboratoire complet, première version

The return of the bottles (version abrégée en francais à la fin)

The bottles were finished a quite long time ago, but as usual, I am late with the posting.
These are just a small sample, and I will post a picture of the whole "alchemist's lab"(or at least, of how far it is currently, because I sense it is still going to be ameliorated a lot).
The labels once done, the bottles still looked way too modern. The thread at the neck, bottle-specific designs, and the caps all posed problems.
I replaced the plastic caps of the narrow opening bottles by cork tops, aged using acrylic paint.
The larger caps, with a metal core, were covered with polymer clay. Each top is slightly different from the others, and it was a great way of experimenting with different techniques and the stamps I had at hand. They were given depth after baking using oil paint or acrylic paint (or both, for some), until I was satisfied with the effect.

I covered the visible part of the threads using fine bands of polymer clay (chocolate Fimo classic, finest setting of the pasta machine, and 0.5-0.7cm wide) wrapped around. For the bottles with the cork tops, I competely covered the threads, as they were not going to be of use anyway (left bottle on the picture). For the jars with their original tops, I only went as high as not to disturb the use of the top (middle and right jars). All were given depth after baking using darker acrylic paint.
For larger areas to cover, like the jar in the middle, I used linen cord. I stabilized it after wrapping using white glue, and antiqued it using diluted acrylic paint. I also used white glue, finger painted on the pottles, to take away part of the shine of the glass (not visible on the pictures, as it was performed afterwards). It would probably be better to use some varnish, but I had little time and many kinds react badly with polymer clay.
Each jar looks cool in itself, but they look even better together :






Pour améliorer l'effet visuel des étiquettes, il fallait camoufler le pas de vis, les bouchons, et certains détails des bouteilles.
Pour les bouteilles à col étroit, le plus simple est de remplacer le bouchon à vis en plastique par un bouchon en liège retaillé et assombri à la peinture acrylique. Pour les autres, j'ai recouvert le couvercle d'une couche de Fimo. C'est une bonne occasion pour tester toutes sortes de décos. Après cuisson, il est possible d'ajouter du relief avec de la peinture acrylique ou à l'huile, voire les deux (juste pas en même temps).
La partie visible des pas de vis a été recouverte de bandes fines de Fimo enroulées tout autour (sur tout le pas de vis pour les bouteilles à bouchon en liège, sur la partie visible en faisant bien attention à ne pas entraver le mouvement du couvercle pour les autres). De la peinture acrylique plus sombre a ensuite été utilisée (peinte puis essuyée sur les zones en relief avec un sopalin. Pour couvrir des surfaces plus grandes (comme pour les deux bocaux semblables de la photo au dessus), j'ai utilisé de la ficelle de lin enroulée, fixée avec de la colle à bois et noircie avec de la peinture acrylique diluée. De la colle à bois (ou du vernis) peuvent également être utilisés pour enlever l'aspect brillant du verre.

Making of the alchemists's cabinet

The bottles will be placed in a specially made cabinet, for which I chose to use papier maché, as it is light but very sturdy.
I learned a lot from my previous experiment to make a small bookcase from papier maché. I had the idea to reinforce the edge of the shelves with plastic u-shaped edges (from the DIY shop), and it worked great: the cardboard did not move, and the shelf edges remained straight during the whole building process and afterwards. However, I had not equiped the sides of the cardboard box (the vertical edges) in the same way, so when they got wet (a natural part of the process of putting papier maché on something), they got all wavy. This thime, I put plastic edges on every single edge (see picture left), and painted the carboard with acrylic prior to covering with paper strips to limit the water uptake.
The upper picture shows the almost complete cardboard base, with the edge reinforcements (glued with wood glue and masking tape). The only missing part is the top, which is a single flat cardboard piece cut to shape. I filled the corners with paper paste for strength.
The right side picture shows the cabinet covered with paper strips (the Canard Enchainé gives high quality, water resilient strips, as you can see).
I managed to get a satifactory finish for the paint, but it is still rather fragile. I am looking now for something watertight and resilient (and not too expensive) to finish it...

Polymer clay specimen bottles 1

I have recently started playing again with polymer clay, and while experimenting with transfers, I started wondering what to do with the transfered picture.
My experimenting pictures were a tad gruesome, especially after I became aware of the Images of the History of Medicine and the Historical Anatomies from the National Library of Medicine (hat tip to Neurophilosophy), so placing them on specimen bottles was the logical next step.
The following tutorial does not present much really new, and I will quote the relevant sources but on the off chance it can be of use to someone, here it is.
I used baking parchment paper/laser printer for the transfer (V. Aharoni, via Glass Attic). I had singled out this method because I did not want to get frustrated with failed transfer, and I wanted to be able to get good transfers from very finely detailed pictures like the old anatomical drawings. It turned out to be a good choice. The printing step is actually the sensitive one, but the transfer itself only failed once (and I had it coming, the way I treated it).
Here is a tutorial/description of the transfer steps with a few tips, using a mix of white/champagne Fimo classic.
I made an antiquing trial using acrylic paint, but the result was disappointing, probably because the surface is flat and does not catch paint much. Oil paint antiquing, on the other hand, gives a great finish in this case. I didn't try on other brands of clays or with color laserjet prints, but I suppose it would work (see V. Aharoni's tests).
The bottles still need caps and ageing to look good...