les bouteilles

this starts out as a little project after hell week. I was inspired by the bottle with flowers that they give everyone to mark the end of hell week and the message that goes with it "may all your hell week ends in flower days." I wanted my spring break to be a healing and creative one, so I started out by looting a ton of colored papers from the well, as well as buying bottles from trader joe's.

initially, my plan is to fill those bottles with stars, as inspired by a quote john green in the fault in our stars: “what did dom pérignon say to fellow monks after he invented champagne? come quickly, I am tasting the stars.” that's how I arrived at my first bottle, which took about 300 stars or more to fill. then because the thing was too labor-intensive (all the cutting and folding), I started jamming in flowers and leaves in to make up for space and it turns out to be aesthetic as hell. join me as I walk you through the rise and fall in my journey.

step 1. get supplies

for this, you'll mainly need bottles, colored papers, flowers and leaves. however, for all the inbetween processing stuff, you'll also need oil, baking soda, paper knife, reusable produce bags, and thin ropes. go to the well printer room for the colored papers. everything else can be found at trader joe's or nature will give it to you. 

flowers I bought from trader joe's were daisies, spray roses, chrysanthemum, eucalyptus, hydrangea, and baby's breath. I asked my lab lecturer for butterfly pea flowers as we had a lab on it as a pH indicator but she didn't let me because of health hazards, so I got it on amazon. I handpicked invasive species such as dandelions or cherry blossoms, pine cones and tree barks that have fallen. one thing you want to keep in mind is how big the flower would be after desiccation. from my experience, hydrangea, dandelions, and cherry blossoms shrink significantly. therefore, you would need other flowers of the same color or simply just have more of them to make up for the loss. baby's breath, eucalyptus, pine cones can go with pretty much any color due to their color. they're also big so can buy you a lot of space.

step 2. remove bottle labels

some bottles are easy to remove labels as the glue is thin. for some, the glue composition is different and it is thick as hell so removing it is pain au chocolat. however, with the help of chemistry, removing all that shiet was an ease. start by scraping off all the labels until the glue remains, then apply baking soda and oil to it. after that, leave it for about half an hour, then rinse it in warm running water. I also recommend washing it with soap as the bottle itself will be very oily. exercise extra caution while brigging them into the bathroom as you might slip and the bottles would break. repeat the oil application step a few more times if all of them doesn't go away in the first go.

unless you're really ambitious, I recommend starting out with tejava-sized bottles (12oz, 350ml). don't start with 500ml or 1L bottles as that shit takes forever to fill. these bottles are also notoriously hard to open, but it'll be a bit easier if you cut the cap links with a paper knife.

step 3. make stars

you can make 16 stars with every a4 paper. fold them in half 4 times to make 16 strips. after that, cut the strips out with your scissors. then, fold the stars. watch this if you need help. I like having half of them in one color and half of them in white. stars of this size would normally fit the opening of most bottles. as accidents may happen and you may need to evacuate the stars, try to pinch them tightly to make them as small as possible for ease of addition and removal. keep in mind that it's a very labor-intensive process. I recommend doing this while watching something, commuting, or when you're just sitting quitely in the cloister and watching the fountain.

I folded stars on the amtrak to new york over spring break. the passenger sitting next to me was an avid traveller. I taught her how to fold stars and we talked about many things in the process. we talked about the vietnam war, my university journey, her future plans of visiting vietnam and I give her some travel recommendations. her friend is in the creative field, and there was a play about the vietnam war (they marched into the sunlight, if I remembered it correctly). she told me how the leaders of both countries sat down, watched it, cried, and healed in the process. this is the aspect of war that we rarely talk about, but I'm just glad that such things happened. I thank the stars for being the beginning of this marvelous conversation <3

step 4. dry flowers and leaves

you really want to dry flowers properly and completely, and this takes about a week or so if you do it correctly. I made the big mistake of arranging them into bottles then wait for them to wilt and naturally desiccate. instead of drying it will start decomposing. you don't want to shove fresh flowers into the bottle either, as when you cap it, the bottle will be an anaerobic environment and produces a lot of gases in the decomposition process. 

my first attempt wasn't so great as the flowers aren't dried, and the flower:star ratio was off. I remember opening it one two weeks later and it stinks real bad. I had to take all of them out and try again.

technically, you can still arrange flowers for a bit before drying them. however, the drying has to happen before the wilting. to dry the flower, cut the bubs from the stem after buying them, then place them into the produce bags. put them in a dry place with lots of sunlight to speed up the process. this process boosts my mood a lot as seeing all the colors and holding them with my bare hands helps me focus and live more in the now.

step 5. put them all together

then, continue by layering them together. for every colored star, there should be a white star, some flowers of the same color and some leaves. continue until the bottle is filled. you're basically done with the basic version here, but read on if you want to further decorate it.

step 6. decorate the bottle

you can decorate the bottle with jewelry, quote tags, photos of yourself or the person you intend to give. I raped canaday color printers a lot in the process. you should have a model photo that has the size you desire, then model every photo after based on it. for quote tags, create the holes using paper punches. put them all together and then you're done!

a lil epilogue

although it's a lot of work, I enjoyed the steps in between a lot. the feeling of doing things one step at a time, and making art for friends and myself is nothing else compared to. another plus is that I learned a shit ton of cool stuff in the process: how to remove labels, estimating flower sizes and drying methods, as well as how to look for free art supplies on campus. I also met a lot of interesting people on this journey, from the lady on amtrack to the cashier at trader joe's, as well as having fun dropping hints for my friends in the process.

I hope that this was an informative and chill read about the origin of the bottle (if you did receive one), as well as how to do it if you ever feel like in the future. read on if you want to read more irrelevant stuff that also ties to the topic of bottles and alcohols.

FURTHER EXPLORATION

bottle anatomy

bottles in sciences

french expressions with bottles

the bottle shtick

cigarettes and the art of romanticizing lung cancer

and the art of deromanticizing it

I owe some of this part to the french wikipedia page about bottles (bouteille), which was surprisingly more detailed compared to the one in english. here, we'll be learning about bottle anatomy, bottle in sciences, as well as french expressions with bottle before diving into the romanticization of additction, specifically drinking and smoking.

i. bottle anatomy

bague, the ring. col, the collar. epaule, the shoulder. corps ou fût, body or trunk. piqûre, the injection. jable, the jable (tbh I don't know what it means but it's that part).

ii. bottles in sciences

besides the normal bottles that we drink from, there are also other interesting bottles that are used in sciences.

leyden jar (bouteille de leyde) is the ancestor of the capacitator. the capacitator and the battery, they're same same but also different. how? like this

klein bottle (bouteille de klein) is a mathematical object that is non-orientable. the neck of the bottle disappears into itself in such a way that there is no outside or inside, just one continuous surface (usnsf)

ekman bottle (bouteille d'ekman) is used to collect seawater at different depths for analysis

iii. french expressions with bottles

to have the bottle (avoir de la bouteille) = to have experience, used to talk about people of a certain age or with a great deal of experience on a subject

having a penchant for the bottle (avoir un penchant pour la bouteille) = overenjoying alcohol, being an alcoholic

throwing a bottle into the sea (jeter une bouteille à la mer) = calling for help in the hope of being heard

with ifs, we would be bottling Paris (avec des si, on mettrait Paris en bouteille) = when we consider only suppositions, anything is possible

the dive bottle (la dive bouteille) = wine

carrying bottles (porter les bouteilles) = walking slowly

to have seen nothing except through the hole of a bottle (n'avoir rien vu que par le trou d'une bouteille) = not to know things

* we aslo have a similar expression in vietnamese, ếch ngồi đáy giếng, or the frog sitting at the bottom of the well, to talk about people that only saw the world from their little well out

to be in the bottle (être dans la bouteille) = to be in the plot, in the plot

iv. the bottle shtick

the other day, we walked across a cupboard showcasing liquor of different sizes and color. I stopped to take a few photos and my eyes glued onto the glass. my uncle asks if I should be drinking those. truth betold, I'm not 21 yet so no. but that doesn't mean I'll be an alcoholic as soon as I turn 21. he told me he only drinks when he has to, and I completely get what he means. let's be honest, alcohol looks cool, walking around with a bottle makes you look cool. if it wasn't, matty healy probably won't be roaming the stage with it. it is his shtick and his stage personna.

however, we do want to sit and think about what is cool about alcohol, and what is not. in her what I learn in my 20s video, jenn im talked about her struggle with alcohol, and concludes that "alcohol doesn't make me more interesting." I think what's hot when there is alcohol is your self control with it. alcohol isn't hot in itself, but your self control and sobriety is. like augustus and his unlit cigarette on his lips in the faut of our stars, I like looking like an alcoholic, but I don't like actually being one. I like photos of me looking cool with a drunk aura. I like wine tasting, being able to name different kind of alcohols, and pairing them with the right food and cheese, as long as it's in moderation. technically speaking, alcohol is a solution, but only in so much.

philosophically speaking, alcohol is a way to know yourself and your limits, and sometimes you have to break your limits to know it. it's also a way to know who you can trust. I do want to know my drunk self with people I trust, though, in case I ever properly party in the future.

v. cigarettes and the art of romanticizing lung cancer

I find the romanticization of addiction interesting, like how far would we go just to look cool. alcohols aside, cigarettes are also as fascinating. I wrote about it this in a blog on branding a year ago. below is a little excerpt from that post.

what runs society is how we perceive things: whether we want them, or not. what I think is, if marketing campaigns can trick people into thinking that diamonds are forever™ for so long that people've been proposing with diamond rings as if it was a tradition, the same way cigarettes advertisements make people think smoking is cool™ and intellectual™ and not cause lung cancer™, we can change the way people perceive dép tổ ong. because truth is,

when a lie is believed for long enough, 

it becomes the truth; and

fashion comes back,

so does tổ ong.

the birth of the diamond engagement ring (the atlantic)

charlotte gainsbourg making smoking look good in 2001 (the guardian)

that time when marlboro tried to promote feminism by portraying smoking ladies (business insider)

or toxic masculinity through the marlboro man figure (business insider)

at least 4 of them died of lung cancer (los angeles times)

1 never smoked a cigarette (the new york times)

vi. and the art of deromanticizing it

cigarettes ads are creative. guess what's even more creative? anti-smoking ads. in the making of “the first tobacco-free generation” by 2032, together with the veil law (loi veil, ban tobacco ads and require companies to print severe warnings on their packs) and évin law (loi évin, forbid favourable advertising of tobacco) they also made some pretty dope anti-smoking ads.

the line reads "fumer, c'est être l'esclave du tabac," which means "to smoke is to be the slave of tobacco." it's interesting how of all the different ways you can show this, they chose this pov. I guess france never disappoints.