Introduction: Spray Paint the Inside of a Glass Bottle
Bottles are sometimes used for decoration. Sometimes people will paint the outside of them. Today I'll be showing you how I painted the inside of some with spray paint. These bottles are for decoration, anything put inside of them should not be consumed. First I'll be showing how I painted these, then I'll talk about some things to keep in mind.
If you would like to see a video version of this Instructable, you can view that here: https://youtu.be/iPBhzQrz1bE
Supplies
Here is what I used:
Step 1: Clean the Inside of the Bottle
Before I paint the inside I clean the bottle out, doing a final rinse with a bit of acetone, then letting that dry.
Step 2: The Basics
Spray painting the inside of a bottle seems straight forward, just point and spray a few short sprays. Although the process is easy, it's a little bit more complicated than just that. You can see that it got a thick coating in the neck of the bottle, but in the main body of the bottle the paint is a bit more sparse. And since the paint in the neck is so thick, it's already running and uneven.
Step 3: Dealing With Runny Paint
If you end up spraying enough into the bottle that it collects into a runny puddle, you can spread it out and not run as much as it sets by holding it at an angle and slowly rotating it. Do this at a semi upright angle for a minute or two, then tip it the other way and slowly rotate it. Go back and forth like this several times, until you can see the paint is a bit set.
Step 4: Check Out the Progress
Now let's take a look at the progress. It's hard to see on the camera, so I shine a light through it from behind. You can see that it's a bit patchy, and runny. This is to be expected just because so much paint gets stopped at the neck of the bottle. Just let it set for more time and dry more between layers than you normally would.
Step 5: Tips for Letting the Paint Dry
For drying the paint inside of the bottle, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Since the space inside of the bottle is fairly contained, the paint doesn't set very well. The first time I tried this, I left the bottle upright over night and the paint mostly settled to the bottom of the bottle. It was also still a bit runny, even though it was sitting for several hours. I realized that the fumes were staying inside of the bottle and keeping the paint from drying. I found that keeping the bottle with the top down helps the fumes get out as the paint dries. Just be ready for some of the paint to drip out. Also allow it to have more time to dry than normal. And as it dries, adjust it's position occasionally so the paint doesn't settle on one side.
Step 6: Finishing It Off
Add a few coats of paint allowing it to dry fairly well in between. Once you have the results you want, you'll likely need to clean off some paint from the outside of the bottle. I just used some acetone for this.
Step 7: I Tried a Texturing Paint
I tried this using a couple different types of paint and a couple different shapes of bottles. This was the paint that I used for the Bronze Play Button that I made. Normally it has a hammered look on the dried surface, but you don't see that effect when painting like this. You can see that the neck of this bottle is shorter than the blue one. This did help get more on the inner surface of the body of the bottle, though it was still necessary to rotate it as the paint started to set.
Step 8: I Tried a Mirroring Paint
With this one I tried using a mirror effect paint. That paint is very thin and runny. Normally this helps it with making a smooth mirror finish, but using it inside of a bottle like this makes it very hard to get a good even layer. Obviously the shape of this bottle is different than most. In order to get the paint even throughout the whole surface, I had to spray extra paint inside and rotate it to evenly spread the paint. And with it being an extra runny paint, this also took longer than normal to set.
Step 9: And That's It!
That's pretty much it for this Instructable. If you have any tips for this or suggestions on how to improve the results, feel free to leave a comment. Thanks for checking it out!