The Wine Bottle Challenge

You may remember, in my post that included the half-scale gift basket, I was bemoaning the fact that I couldn't find decent half-scale white wine bottles.  Carrie had the idea of checking Stewart Dollhouse Creations.  They have 3-D printed wine bottles that you can color with glass pens; unfortunately, they only make them in 1:48 scale. ☹ I looked on Shapeways, though, and found wine bottles in 1:24 scale.  😊 I ordered a set, as well as the pens recommended by Stewart Dollhouse Creations.  The bottles are in smooth translucent plastic.

I tried both the pens and some Gallery Glass that I had on hand.  (I ordered a sampler set from Amazon a while ago.)  Here are the results.

Going from left to right:  The red glass pen looks too much like ketchup to me.  The green glass pen looks kind of blotchy.  The burgundy Gallery Glass looks way too pale (despite 3 or 4 coats), probably because of the white translucent core.  Because of that, I tried coloring the bottle with a black permanent marker, then adding a coat or two of the burgundy Gallery Glass.  I like the look!  I also like the look of the yellow Gallery Glass for the white wine.  I made a couple more attempts at a green bottle—first with just the light green Gallery Glass, then trying to color the bottle with an India ink pen before using the Gallery Glass.  I'm not happy with either result.  However, I think, based on my tests, I could produce both a red and a white wine bottle color that would be acceptable.

Now here's the problem.  This is the comparison between the same type of half-scale red wine bottles I used in the gift basket, and the new Shapeways bottles.  There is a huge difference! 

The Shapeways bottles are probably closer to reality.  The original wine bottles I got are ¾ of an inch tall, which would translate to 18" in real life.  I measured our wine bottles; they are between 11 and 12", depending on the shape of the bottle.  The Shapeways bottles are 7/16", which is pretty close, but they just seem so small!  Ideally, I would have something in between.  I had a similar issue with the champagne in the Orient Express.  I bought an unpainted metal mini of a champagne bucket with champagne, and a green bottle that I thought could work as a champagne bottle.  They were both listed as half scale, but look at the difference in size!

Ultimately, I went with the larger bottle (which I painted, stuck a label on, and supplemented with miniature ice), as it seemed closer to scale with the rest of the food items, even if a little bit large.

The green bottle (which I still have) could potentially work as a white wine bottle, once it's been given a "cork," but they're pricey--$4.95/bottle!

Here is one of the new bottles next to the gift basket.

Maybe I can use them as sauce bottles (gourmet barbecue sauce? flavored vinegar? ketchup?), but they just don't look right to me for wine.  I've also tried the various bottles in a wine rack.

The original red is too big; it didn't fit in the wine rack at all.   The newer bottles seem a bit small.  *Sigh*  That's the problem with miniatures.  Even items of the same scale can vary greatly in size, and items that are perfectly to scale sometimes don't look quite right.  The search continues.

Hope you all are having a good week, and that your minis are behaving better than mine.  😊