I came up with a possible poor man's version.
I've worked with quarksbarb in creating the many bottle labels and designs for her party over the recent years. Recently, she found bottled water under the name
1litre that has a stair stepped top. As you can see in the link the steps aren't as plentiful and styled exactly like the ones used in the movie or show, but I think it will work for this project.
Now if you wanted to go the cheapest route, you can stop right there. All they need is the screen printed decal taken off. I'm having a slight problem with that because I know that certain types of solvents and acetones will cloud the plastic. I started off with rubbing alcohol and worked my way up to fingernail polish. While that's all I had on hand, it weakened the ink enough that i could lightly scrape it off. This again was not something i wanted to do b/c of the possibilities of scratch marks. I have used a product sold to trophy companies called
Novus that works pretty well. Sadly I don't have any on hand and will have to order some when I get back to this project. I have many empty bottles that I can practice on so if anyone has ideas on how to take that screened in off, please let me know.
If you want to get that bottle in a bottle look, I found something that I think might work. You could do one of these two things. One is that you can cobble together an outer sheath from acrylic cylinders from TAP plastics (or anyone else who sells the correct size cylinder and bottom cap) or you can find a Tupperware spaghetti container. Now, Tupperware has changed their design, so you'll have to scour thrift stores and yard sales. I have run into a few problems with this tube. Sometimes this tube is scratched up, so unless you want to buff out the scratches or make it a frosted version, you'll need to do a little work on it. The other is that the tube is too long:
The solution is to cut it down, and normally that won't be a problem, but the other problem is sometimes this plastic tube can be brittle to cut. I haven't cut mine because I don't know the best way to cut it with out screwing it up. I think mine is scratched enough that I might go with the frosted look and keep my eyes open for a cleaner tube. That is if I can cut it without getting a skewed cut. I've cut acrylic many times, but never a clear tube. I would probably tape off the tube that will stay, but I would love to hear suggestions on properly cutting it.
As you can see by this last pic, the 1litre bottle fits snugly and if I can get it cut down, I really think that this would be a quick and simple project for people either on a budget, needing a prop for a set piece, or for their own private collection.
I apologize if this needs to be split off into it's own thread and will do so if needed.
