I love a good challenge. Furthermore, I love pushing boundaries and flexing the design skills and creativity with some open ended work. So much of what I do freelance that "pays the bills" is for someone else, and while I enjoy what I do, it's sometimes nice to take a Sunday afternoon and just have a play.
So that's what I did. I found the first #bottleartchallenge post a week or so ago and meant to participate but work and energy levels, and burnout from the week prior got the best of me so I missed it. I was thrilled to see that 
Here's my submission before and after:
I'm going to be honest, I'm not really a Disney Princess person, never was. Even as a kid, with maybe the exception of Pocahontas, because she lived in the woods, went cliff diving, talked to trees and her best friends were a raccoon and a hummingbird. Talk about living your best life. Oh did I mention she shot a bow? Ugh. Girl knows what's up.
Like I said, I wanted to push myself so sure, I don't know jack about Cinderella but I did some research and found a quote from the film I wanted to use. I created the typography in Illustrator and exported it as a PNG to add to the bottle in Photoshop where I added a few different layers of sparkles, and glass fragment textures.
I tried a few versions of the bottle texture before I settled on this, a few that mimicked the curves and fabric draping of a dress, but none of them looked right to me. I decided to go with something more MAGIKUL and SHINEYYYY. The facets of the main layer and crystal clustery thing you can see on the bottle are adapted from this image.
I almost NEVER wear skirts, but I'd make an exception for this one. Yes it's battery operated, yes it's TARDIS blue and YES IT BLINKS. Dead. Had to incorporate this somehow.
I topped the whole thing off with some reflections and shadows to try to preserve the luminosity and glittery glass feel of the bottle that I wanted. Then tweak tweak tweak of positioning, layer opacity, alignment, overlays, MORE overlays, I think this final piece ended up having over 50 layers, because I'm extra and can't help myself. More than anything I wanted to challenge myself for as much realism as possible so that I'd be left with a convincing mockup as well as a design I was happy with.
Overall I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Tried my best not to make it too fluffy or girly, because Cindarella, girl, you gotta get your -ish together love. Losing shoes all over town? Cmon... Could you imagine going out drinking with this chick, no shoes, and throwing up in the back of the Uber at 2 am?
Cindy, gurl, get it together.
I hope you enjoyed this submission as much as I enjoyed making it and sharing my process with you. It really helps my brain to just have an open ended play to keep the juices flowing and creative brain sharp.
Wherever you are, I hope you're having a lovely day (it's stunning here at the moment, getting a lot of energy and optimism from my friend the Sun today)
<3
The girl who ain't losing her shoes all over town.
 |  |  |  |
|---|