How do I work with ice and a glass bottle for a product shoot?

Question

I have a bottle of vodka that I want to have the effect of being frozen with shards of ice on it.

If I lived in Alaska where I could leave it outside and drip water over the top every hour or so, that would be ideal. But I don't. I'm trying to figure out a way to use my freezer for this effect, and my question is how best to do this.

I need to keep the water on the bottle, so it will freeze to it. I've thought about a ziplock bag, which I'd peel off after it's frozen... then perhaps chisel away the ice so it doesn't look like it was in a bag (sharp edges, etc.).

Or, to do it so it looks like an ice cube with the bottle in the middle. For that, I was thinking to fill a baking dish and freeze it in that, and then heat the back side to release it from the baking dish. Has anyone done something like this and does anyone have advice or tips?

I'm thinking of everything in my mind and want to try the least amounts of times for fear of impacting the frosted look on the bottle.

Answer

I don't know how the kids are doing it these days, but in my day we used acrylic resin (available by the bucket in larger craft shops) for "ice" and clear Krylon (misted with water from a plant mister when necessary) for "frost".

Unlike food maquettes (such as using coloured Crisco and icing sugar for "ice cream") you aren't breaking any truth in advertising laws, and the "ice" will survive the lighting and staging process. Real ice poses a lot of problems. There is a relatively narrow range of temperatures in which it looks right (too cold and it lacks gloss, too warm and it melts too quickly), it takes textured fingerprints (or gloveprints) that you're forever having to torch out (while carefully trying to avoid soot deposits -- which can never be removed completely, and therefore mean starting over again).

In the end, the fake stuff usually looks more believable than the real.

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