I’ve been storing a few boxes of wine bottles & whiskey bottles around for years thinking that one day I would remove the labels & make a mural or something to hang on the wall or behind a bar etc. Finally decided on mounting the labels on a board & framing it. So working on that at the moment. The hardest part is removing the labels without damaging them. I started out using a heat gun to concentrate the heat on the label & then holding the bottle while I used a razor knife to slowly & methodically cut away the label. This works but is time consuming as you have to continually set down the heat gun & then remove a portion of the label & then pick up the heat gun again & repeat. The oven method is faster. Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees, place the bottle in the oven with the label facing up on the middle rack for 15 minutes. Using gloves, remove the bottle to a work space, use a heavy towel beneath you glove to hold the bottle without burning your hand & then using your razor knife, begin to slice off the label. Once the label is removed, I use a plastic sleeve I found at Hobby Lobby to place the label in for safe keeping until ready to mount. This method is working for me so far & is the most efficient I have found to move forward on this project.

I finished the first board finally using whiskey labels. I stained the board & then used a photo spray contact glue to mount the labels. Unfortunately, I failed to realize that the glue is a water based spray glue & the stain & polyurethane sealer I used is oil based. Needless to say, the oil base broke down the glue & the labels started peeling up. I tried a few different glues but none of them would allow the labels to adequately adhere to the oil based surface.

It still looks ok if you don’t look too closely.

My next attempt is using wine labels & I’m going to glue them onto a clean board with no stain or sealer. I’m positioning them to cover the entire board instead of lining them up & spacing them the way I did before.