Have fun and create great gifts with your empty wine bottles.
Empty wine bottles, instead of being tossed, can be used in a wide variety of wine bottle craft projects to be enjoyed in your home or given as gifts. Use them to decorate your garden, make lamps or drinking glasses, create fancy vinegar bottles and soap dispensers or have fun making your own time capsules. Does this Spark an idea?
Garden Decorations
Empty wine bottles make fine garden decorations with little effort. The easiest garden decoration to create is a bottle tree. Wash your bottles and soak them to remove the labels and glue. Slip the open tops of the bottles over the small dead branches of trees in your garden with the necks facing the tree's trunk so that the branches enter the bottles.
With a little more work you can craft wine bottles to make attractive hummingbird feeders. Paint the bottles with your favorite designs, turn them upside down, drill a hole in the top for ease in refilling and attach hummingbird feeder nozzles in the necks of the bottles. Hang them with wire and a hook and enjoy how they brighten up your garden and attract hummingbirds.
If you are really industrious, break up different colors of wine bottle glass, put them in tile glue and create your own artistic mosaic design on top of a cement patio.
Lamps
If you have access to a 1/2-inch glass and tile drill, you can turn your wine bottle into an attractive lamp. Lay the empty, clean, dry bottle on a cloth and drill a hole about an inch from the bottom of the bottle, being careful to keep the drill bit wet with cold water. When the hole is drilled, push a string of mini lights into the bottle, leaving a bit of cord and the plug free.
Drinking Glasses
To make a drinking glass from an empty wine bottle, choose a bottle with a flat bottom that is not dimpled. Use a bottle cutter perpendicular to the glass, not to cut the glass but to scratch it so that you can break it easily. Sand the cut the edges first with silicone grinding powder and then with sand paper, making sure the edges are completely smooth. White wine bottles or Bordeaux wine bottles are best for making drinking glasses. You can also etch the glasses with a monogram or design.
Fancy Vinegar Bottles
Create fancy vinegar or olive oil bottles by filling your empty wine bottles with multicolored and multishaped spices, hot peppers, carrot slices and olives. Fill with olive oil or vinegar. Cork the bottle and melt paraffin over the cork to seal it.
Soap Dispensers
A simple yet attractive gift idea using an empty wine bottle is to make a soap dispenser. Fill the clean bottle with liquid soap, insert a plastic pump and paint the outside of the bottle with metallic paint and sprinkle with gold powder while wet. Without the pump your bottle becomes an unusual vase.
Time Capsules
You can create time capsules with your empty wine bottles to mark a wedding day, anniversary or special vacation trip. Place inside the clean bottle anything small that reminds you of that particular day or trip, including scraps of paper, pebbles, confetti, small photos, sand, small favors, ticket stubs or anything small you treasure. Seal your bottle with a cork and put it away to be discovered in your attic years from now.
Tags: wine bottles, wine bottle, bottle with, clean bottle, empty wine
