Altered Bottle

PaperArtsy's current challenge is about Bottles. I already painted my Bottle page in my PaperArtsy challenge journal more than an month ago [find out why here], so now I decided to alter an actual bottle.
I saw a lovely altered bottle project some time ago over at Finnabair's blog and but never got round to trying it - so now at least I had an incentive...

First, I painted the bottle with black gesso and then with some Fresco Paints (Smurf and South Pacific). Then I wanted to create a "vintage" effect so I mixed some crackle paste with a bit of gold embossing paste (both Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 line) - but it didn't crackle at all (except in places where I didn't mixed the pastes properly), and it didn't even look gold. So I mixed the same crackle paste with regular metallic paint - this time it created some cracks but it still didn't look the way I wanted. So I decided to use some glitter paste to add a bit more texture.

Next, I glued down some flowers and a wooden die-cut (covered with gold embossing powder). Then I added some cheese cloth painted with metallic paints.

I applied a bit of bead paste here and there. The paste is transparent - it dries to a finish similar to Glossy Accents - and I didn't want that so I mixed it with bronze acrylic ink.

I didn't like the colour combination, so I decided to go over the flowers with black gesso. Then I applied some metallic wax pastes over the black embellishments. It looked a bit too "gold" so I added some teal metallic ink here and there and let it drip.

Here are some details: 

Even though this is not exactly "my style" - and there was a point when I was about to throw it away - I think the bottle turned out great...