The kind of champagne bottle that you don’t want to pop!
By Lauren Kate Drewry
Ole Miss alumni Savannah Sanders started her custom hand-painted bottle business, Savsandpaints, during quarantine in 2020. A year later, her bottles have become a popular celebratory item as she’s closing in on her 100th bottle.
After graduating from Ole Miss in the spring of 2020, Sanders planned to take a gap year before going to graduate school, and had a job lined up at a local retail store on the Square. When the COVID pandemic struck, the job fell through, leaving her to find another way to make money in a completely remote way.
“It was really random,” said Sanders. “This older girl I knew was kind of helping me brainstorm what to do for my gap year, and she knew I loved art. And she said, ‘This is so far fetched, but could you paint bottles? I think that’d be a great idea.’ I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Yeah, I’ll can sure try.’ So my aunt’s birthday came up, and that’s the first one I ever did. It was July and I kind of got the hang of it and I just started business out of it.”
Sanders began her business painting bottles for friends and family, but a popular post landed her first real order overseas.
“I painted a bottle for my roommate with her pet Dalmatian on it,” said Sanders. “My roommate posted it on her Dalmatian’s Instagram account, and it started getting a lot of attention. A lady from the UK saw it and contacted me about painting a bottle for her dad, so my first real customer was a lady from the England!”
After running into mailing trouble with her international order, Sanders now requires Oxford pickup only.
Sanders works remotely from her house in Oxford where she makes about 4–5 bottles a week. Her roommate, Emily Ross, has watched as her business has flourished.
“So when we moved in, the business had obviously picked up a bunch, and she would just sit in a living room all day every day with her little paint cart and paint bottles while we’d watch Netflix,” said Ross “I’d try to help creatively but never actually did.”
Sanders has made three bottles for Ross and her family, and has personally customized them.
“[The bottles] are so personal and obviously she’s my best friend, so she knows every inside joke there is to know,” said Ross. “For my sister’s she put Baby Lilly on it, she put her favorite song lyrics, and she went above and beyond as always. It’s not just like, ‘Okay, make it cute and pink and frilly.’ She pulls out touches that really makes the bottle personal.”
Sanders’s bottles have become a popular commodity in Oxford and surrounding areas, and she has closed orders until the end of the summer. According to Ross, she has been recognized many times for her work around town.
“We were all in the Library a couple weeks ago, and this group of girls came up to us and were like ‘Wait. Are one of you Savannah Sanders?’” said Ross. “It turned out that she had painted one of their bottles, and they were so excited to meet her. To us it was so funny!”
Sanders started off painting bottles for 21st birthdays, and as her business has grown, she has started receiving many orders for weddings, vacations, and even bridge club gifts.
“The craziest order I’ve had was a lady asking me for nine bottles at once!” said Sanders. “I painted all nine bottles for her bridge group as a Christmas gift.”
Ole Miss junior Emma Rae Leathers ordered a bottle from Sanders in the earlier stages of her business.
“Savannah’s bottle painting business hadn’t quite taken off like it has now by the time my mom ordered a bottle for my 21st birthday in September 2020,” said Leathers. “My hand-painted bottle was the sweetest surprise on my big day! Savannah made my bottle pink and baby blue, my favorite colors. My favorite part was definitely seeing my dog, Koda, painted with Mickey Mouse ears. It had all of my favorite things.”
Leathers’s family has known Sanders for many years, and have been following her story.
“Savannah is from my hometown, Tupelo, and I know that she has always been very artistic,” said Leathers. “I have followed her Instagram account for a long time now!”
Sanders found her passion for art at a young age through her grandmother, who inspired her to pursue it.
“My grandmother is an artist, so I’ve kind of always followed in her footsteps,” said Sanders. “When I was young I would go to her studio and doodle all the time. Art is something you really can practice and get better at, so I’ve always loved art. I’ve always been doodling.”
Recently, Sanders has followed her grandmother’s example, and started giving art lessons to a young girl from Oxford Elementary School.
Sanders sells her bottles exclusively through her Instagram page to target her main customers, which are college-age girls.
“I found out about Savannah’s business through Instagram,” said Mississippi State junior Emily Henson. “I kept seeing girls in my sorority post pictures with their cute bottles for their 21st birthdays, and I really wanted one myself to remember the special occasion.”
Customers get to pick what they want to be depicted on the bottle, and leave it to Sanders to channel their ideas into a creative bottle painting.
“I’m a really big fan of the beach, and Savannah put a beautiful painting of it on my bottle,” said Henson. “I also loved the anchor that she put on it, because it represents the sorority I’m in. Savannah really made the bottle special and personal to me.”
According to Sanders, she has has to do a lot of improvising and creative thinking for customers who do not give her sufficient information to work with.
“Honestly, I get very vague request like most of the time, and I really have trouble brainstorming,” said Sanders. “I have to look at their Instagram, because their friend will just tell me, ‘Oh, she likes blue.’ They’re very vague with what they want on it.”
While she will still be doing some 21st birthday bottles, Sanders has plans to push into a more mature audience in the coming year.
“My plan right now is to switch my clientele from college age students more to adults,” said Sanders. “I’m going to go up in prices for next year, so I really want to do more for adult audiences.”
Despite being well known for her bright, bubbly 21st birthday bottles, Sanders enjoys to paint more beautiful, chic bottles.
“My favorite one that I’ve done was a rose a bottle, so its colors were light pink and black,” said Sanders. “I did a beautiful beach scene on it. Oh, it was so fun. Most of my bottles are bright and fun, but this one is more sophisticated and elegant. That’s why I love it so much.”
According to Sanders, her customers do not pop their bottles, but they keep them in memory of a celebratory event. Most use them to accent bar carts or to decorate in their kitchens.
Bottle painting has taken websites like Pinterest and Etsy by storm. Hand-painted custom champagne bottles can cost hundreds of dollars. Sanders requires customers to contact her personally about the pricing lists of her bottles.
Sanders does more than just painting bottles with her business. She also gets hired often for another popular 21st birthday trend of large, painted signs for girls to wear out on their birthday.
“Savannah makes [the bottles], and she’s so precious, she’s easy to work with and very, very accommodating and that’s definitely what makes it Savsandpaints,” said Ross.
