After spending a week “in the Big House”, I’m really excited to highlight my designs inspired by the brand.  The Big House brand surprised me throughout the week in many ways….from causing me to select a screw cap wine at the store, to actually LIKING a wine with a screw cap, to captivating the marketer in me through their consistent branding in all of the marketing channels.

Design Background

As I started thinking about the designs for the week, the prison theme was a given.  From there, the obvious choice for the main design was a bracelet….handcuffs….get it…ha ha.  Anyway, I knew that I wanted to incorporate as many elements of the bottle that I could – the glass, the label, the screw cap, and the collar around the top of the bottle.  I also started to think about design elements that would work well with the brand colors and the prison theme.  Some of the recycled glass beads I had on hand I knew would work well.  I also wanted to try to work some chain into the design as well.  Last week I had wrapped some glass in wire.  That piece, made me think of the bars and chain link fence at a jail and I wanted to pull that design style  into the piece as well.  From there, I set to work…..

The Design Process

The first order of business every week is “disassembling” the bottle.  I screwed off the cap – that was easy!  I worked on removing the labels and, then, I went to remove the collar.  I quickly realized that this collar wasn’t like normal cork wine – flexible and easy to remove – instead it was metal.  I needed to use a variety of tools to get it off the bottle.  After a bit of work, I had the piece I was looking for.  The final step was breaking the bottle.  I learned a couple things in the bottle breaking process this week:

1. Wine bottles are “stronger” than beer bottles – it took me three tries to get it to break!
2. Glass is sharp – yes, I cut my finger.  Lesson learned – I should wear gloves in addition to safety glasses.
3. This wine bottle wasn’t brown, it was green.  This threw off my design thoughts on the color scheme…

From there, I started to pull out the beads I had been thinking about and began to figure out how to integrate the green (not brown) color of the glass.  These are the initial options I came up with:

In the end, only two of the five sales ended up in the main designs and another is “sort of” in the collection.  As the pieces came together, I pulled other beads and chains from my stock to come up with the perfect mix.

The Collection

The collection has five designs.  Four use elements from the Big House bottle and the other one just fits the color scheme and, frankly, I liked the stone so I kept the design in.  With that, below is the Big House Collection:

The Bracelet

I mentioned early in the post that a bracelet was going to be the cornerstone design and it was.  I worked with a number of different elements in the bracelet before finally arriving on the style that felt “right”.

The centerpiece of the design is a piece of the bottle glass wrapped in wire.  To the left, the two orange and grey “beads” are made from the metal collar that was on the bottle.  Left of that is an amber recycled glass bead with the words “Big House” from the label  attached.  To the right of the centerpiece is another recycled glass bead with “the criminal” from the label.  Right of that are two more collar beads and another recycled glass bead.  To see more photos of the bracelet or to purchase it for your own, you can visit the Drinks to Design Etsy shop.

The Collection Details

The Ball and Chain

This design is simple, yet truly follows the prison feel.  A circular piece with a great graphic was cut out of the bottle collar and combined with a 20 inch chain that has an industrial feel.  I picture this piece being worn with a black tee for a day out and about around town.  Of all the pieces in the collection I think this one has the most straightforward connection to the prison theme…while I can’t pinpoint exactly why…it just does. Etsy link.

Wine Snob Rehab

I make a lot of wine charms using the cork from wine bottles.  I liked the idea of pairing that design style with a brand who strives to “break traditions” in the wine industry.  From their screw caps to the box wines, Big House challenges our thinking about wine packaging.  I’ve never used a wine label to “adorn” the cork wine charms.  I love how they turned out and know I will be using this style in other wine charm sets. Etsy link.

The Lockup

Three independent pendants make up this piece.  They can be worn together as a set of three or split up and worn individually for a different look.  The primary piece is the small lock cut from the top of the screw cap.  The second piece is constructed with a smoothed piece of the bottle glass wrapped in wire.  The third piece has two recycled glass beads – amber and grey – that compliment the colors in the design.  Etsy link.

The Stone

The final piece in the collection doesn’t have any artifacts from the wine bottle included.  Originally, the pendant was created as the third piece of “The Lockup” above.  However, the design in the stone seemed to compete too much with the lock from the screw cap.  So, I switched the stone for the recycled glass beads.  I thought this natural piece looked simple, and beautiful so I kept it in with the others.  Etsy link.

Summary

Thanks to the Big House for giving me some great material and inspiration this week!  I’ve really enjoyed my time in the Slammer!