Wedding bottles

So you know about the wedding quilt. The newlyweds are also getting wedding bottles!

My cousin saved and brought home 3 bottles from her son's wedding reception that I could slump for them. August is the worst time to run the kiln but we had one cool day last week and I was able to get these done before I need to deliver them this Friday.

The green one is nice and shiny and has a swirl pattern on the back. Can you see the one with the one with the painted label has a dullness to it? That's devitrification. Bottle glass is really susceptible to it. I spent a ton of time trying to get a fusing schedule that would avoid that but bottle glass is of all different types and there's not one schedule that will work.

Devit occurs on fusible glass too and the industry came up with some products to prevent it. This is what I use on bottles.

You paint it on the top half of the bottle. There can't be one drop on the back of the bottle that will touch the mold. If there's any there it will stick permanently to the mold. I know that because I ruined a mold that way. Here's one treated and ready to be fired. 
In the 2 plain bottles above I was able to do this pre-treatment but I couldn't do it on the one with the label. I learned the hard way that the devit mix ruins the label.
It's a trade off and the label looks so nice that I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff.
I hope these will be nice wedding mementos for Clay and Lydia. I can't wait to give them the bottles and quilt this weekend and they haven't even been married a year yet. My gifts are early!

The bottle in the photo above is on the left in this photo.

All 3 of these clear ones were fused flat because the bottles are such odd shapes. I have no idea what I'll do with them.

I did this whole group primarily because I needed to do this one for my next door neighbor. I can't do a bottle with paint on the back in a mold. I learned the hard way that they stick to the mold. So this one had to be done flat on fiber paper. It fused really nice and Melanie was very happy with it.