Miniature Limoncello Bottle Favor Tutorial

In yesterday's limoncello tutorial post, I promised to share the details of my packaging and bottling.  

I absolutely love how these little bottles turned out!  

I used the 50ml size glass bottles from Freund Container Supply (my favorite source for pretty much any type of bottle or container!).  This is the same size of bottle that's you'd find in a minibar, or on an airplane.  Perfect for a single serving.  And so cute and tiny!  

I made an army of these adorable little guys!  That doesn't sound quite right.  What should be the word for a group of miniature limoncello bottles?  A delight of limoncello bottles?  A celebration?  Come up with a brilliant idea, leave it in the comments, and I'll send you some bottles, just for having fun playing with language with me!

I knew from the moment I came up with the limoncello plan, that I wanted to figure out how to seal it with that special wax on fancy wine bottles.  Turns out, after a bit of Googling, that it's called Bottle Seal Wax.  Makes sense!  I bought my Bottle Seal Wax on Amazon.  

I didn't need much, so I actually melted my bottle seal wax in a cup measure over a very low flame.  Once the wax had melted, I just dipped the cap and neck of my limoncello bottles in the wax, let the excess drip off, then turned right-side-up and let cool.  

Here's something I learned the hard way:  it takes a lot of layers of white wax to cover up a black cap.  Should have thought that through a little better.  I ended up having to spray paint the tops of the caps white (not the inside, where the limoncello would touch, just the outside) in order to get decent coverage with just two or three dips of wax.  This wouldn't have been a problem if I'd chosen a darker color of wax.

The labels were my first real attempt at any graphic design.  Which is not my forte, but I'm pleased with how they turned out!  I started by sketching a simple lemon.  I inked it, and photographed it, then removed the background so it would print cleanly.

If you'd like to use this lemon image, please feel free to do so, with credit back to me somewhere.

I created the labels in Adobe Illustrator, and simply printed them out on cardstock.  The lemon was colored with just a bit of watercolor paint.  Here's a free digital download of the limoncello labels if you'd like to use them for your own project.  Just print out the PDF and go.

I used my glue gun to glue the cardstock labels to the bottle.  It worked surprisingly well.  Add a little bit of baker's twine and a faux wax seal, and you have an exceptionally stylish little package!  (I'll have more details on the custom wax seal tomorrow.)

Cheers!