Wine Corsets

Dress Up Your Wine Gifts

Personalized Wine Corsets

How to make wine corsets to dress up a bottle.

Make personalized wine corsets to cosset your hosts and hostesses this holiday season.

Don't be out off by my use of the very dated word "cosset". I had to look it up myself.

It means to treat with indulgence or to pamper.

I recalled the word and thought it had an appropriate connotation, but couldn't remember exactly what it meant. Either I'm getting old or the language is changing. Or both!

Here are directions and tips for making your own wine corsets.

Mine are done digitally but you could also do them using rub-on letters and word art ... or even do your own calligraphy.

If you're doing yours without benefit of computer, just skip the irrelevant parts.

Materials and Tools:

• Glossy photo paper - an 8 ½ by 11" sheet makes two corsets
• Digital graphic software like Adobe Photoshop
• Holiday word art and other graphic designs from Scrap Girls
• 34 to 48" of ribbon for each corset
• Hole punch
• Self-stick reinforcements for the holes
• Scissors
• Fray block if your ribbon ends tend to fray
• Bottle of wine for each corset :-)

Each corset measures about 9 by 4 ¼"; so two will fit on an 8 ½ by 11" sheet of paper.

When designing your label, take care to keep the design bold so it is easy to read (a lot of contrast or white space) and to keep the main message small enough that it will show completely when someone looks at the front of the bottle (like the "Merry Christmas" designed by Amanda Sok of Scrap Girls in my example).

Directions for Wine Corsets

1. I created my design using Adobe Photoshop. Create, print your design and cut out the labels.

2. You want three pair of holes for the corset ribbon to wind through. Each hole will be reinforced with an adhesive reinforcement, so be sure to punch the holes far enough away from the edge to accommodate the reinforcement circles.

3. Holding the short edges of the label together so that the holes will line up exactly, punch holes at the center, top and bottom. Press a reinforcement disk on the label's back around each hole.

4. As for ribbon, the wider the ribbon you choose, the longer it needs to be. The bottle on the left is tied up with a 34" piece of ¾" red velvet ribbon, while I used a 44" piece of 1 ½" wired ribbon for the bottle on the right. Wired ribbon looks really lovely because you can arrange it almost like angel's wings. That way it shows up no matter how the bottle is held.

Assembly

If your ribbon tends to fray along the cut edge, apply a line of fray block.

The first time you tie up a new wine corset is like the first time you lace up a new pair of shoes. It takes a bit of time. So I lace mine up ahead. Then, when we're headed off to a party,

I only need to loosen the laces enough to slip the corset over the gift wine bottle and finish it off with a nice big prettily-arranged bow.