I receive a couple of e-catalogues (I can't afford anything in them but they're fun to look at anyway) and an item for sale in one of them simply floored me. They're asking $99.00 - $249.00 plus shipping for just ONE wine bottle candle hurricane lamp! Oh my!
I immediately got online and checked out how much it would cost for a bottle/jar cutting kit and found a couple of sites that sell them for only about $40.00 and they are complete with cutter, polisher and instructions!
I am not a wine drinker but I know plenty of people who are (in moderation of course), and they will gladly donate the empties so I can make a bunch of assorted sizes and colors by simply cutting off the bottom of the bottles to give away as gifts, maybe even sell at local craft fairs or keep for personal use! The candles can be purchased at the dollar store.
Oh, and you can use the glass cutting kit for jars and assorted bottles to make vases, pencil holders, candy and nut holders, etc by cutting off the tops instead of the bottom for future projects too. And recycling is good ;-)
By Deeli from Richland, WA
This page contains the following solutions.
I work with stained glass a lot and often use the bottoms of wine bottles in my windows. The bottles with the pushed in bottoms look really cool with the sun shining through.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
How do you put a hole in the bottom of a wine bottle without breaking it?
By Dianne from Wooster, OH
It's not easy! You need a special drill bit. You can sometimes use the one made for drilling ceramics but a diamond bit works much better. & while you're drilling you need to have someone drip water on the bit & the area being drilled. This prevents heat build-up. At least this is how a friend told me she drilled a sheet of glass which is basically the same thing (but not as thick as a pop bottle.
Check this out:
www.diamond-drill-bit-and-tool.com/
They sell flat nose diamond bits & also have a "how to" section.
www.askthebuilder.com/
I do drill wine bottles with a drill press. This helps because you can exert even pressure. First fill the bottle with cool water all the way to the top and cork it. I use a vacuum sealing cork. Then use some plumbers putty to create a dam at the drill site and fill that with water. All this is to keep the glass cool. Drill away. The tricky part is at the very end, you don't want to put to much force because it can still splinter.
I would like ideas for uses for wine bottles. Has anyone tried to cut them with a welding torch? Thank you.
By Sheilah Link
I don't know about cutting wine bottles with a torch, but I have learned about Donna Dewberry, and her paints that are used for glass, etc. I love Donna Dewberry, and she is very decorative. Glass can be painted with a certain type of paint, and cured in the oven.
Someone made a wine bottle light for my mom. It's basicaly just a short string of christmas lights inside the wine bottle. The did drill a hole at the bottom for the electric cord.
I have a large collection of empty blue glass wine bottles. I'm looking for design ideas for reusing them. I love the cobalt blues and all the different shapes and sizes. Ideas?
Here's a few ideas:
I saw the coolest use for cobalt blue wine bottles on HGTV.
---> They made a "Bottle Tree"... which was a long wood (or metal) spike (about 5 or 6 feet tall) with wood dowels sticking out of it. They put the bottles on the dowels that stuck out horizontally and planted IVY or another creeper and wound it around the "tree" in their yard. This looked SO VERY COOL in the sunshine and was weather proof. You could substitute the homemade tree with a small leafless shrub too.
---> or use them to make a coat hanger by using a high quality bonding glue to a post or a small beam of wood
---> Set the bottles on a shelf or a window ledge and stuff with mini low volt lights & you have a beautiful conversation piece!
---> Break up the bottles in a brown bag wrapped in a towel using a hammer and use the glass (wear gloves) to do mosaics with. You could make stepping stones that would sparkle in the sun, or cover just about anything with the pieces. just go online to get instructions on how to do mosaics.
--->You can buy a glass cutter, and make other stuff
---> One more idea. Take the bottles to somewhere that they have a kiln and you can melt the glass into blobs.
Some time ago, my mom took cool bottles ( and the blue wine would have been way cool) and she hand painted "oil" etc on them, put a cork, some raffia sold them for a church fundraiser.
You can drill a hole in the back, put a 20-string of Christmas lights through the hole and then decorate the outside with ribbon, wine charm and grapes or whatever you like. We do these and sell them and have been doing pretty well.
We have a bottle tree made from blue bottles in our neigborhood. There are several sizes - wine bottles, the old milk of magnesia bottles and a smaller blue jar that I think Noxema skin cream came in.
Hey...I have a great idea for your bottles. Get a "Bottle Tree". Try searching for The Bottle Tree Man. They're beautiful!
There is a bottle house in Rhyolite, NV (a few hours out of Las Vegas). It's a house built with bottles instead of brick or other building supplies. Interesting! Built eons ago, mostly all the bottles were recycled from a saloon or tavern.
On the note of melting the glass into blobs in a
kiln, you could also cut the bottles into rings on
a wet tile saw, then melt them in a kiln to form
blobby rings.
Then string them all together for a recycled and
unique wind chime. Visit your favorite search engine
and type in MOTHER EARTH NEWS RECYCLED WINDCHIMES. Very fun!
KM
I use them to edge my garden beds. I just dig a hole, bury them 1/2 way down and upside down. I put Christmas lights behind them. It is beautiful at night!
I am doing a spiritual project involving blue glass bottle (cobalt). Please, please if anyone is willing to sell or donate to us. I would be in deep gratitude. I need some in New York and in San Francisco, and Minneapolis.
If you do not have any, but have leads Please share on how to acquire blue glass (cork preferred) , other acceptable as well. Peace and love beyond all understanding .. Lili
I would re-fill them with home made wine. Who plants bottles in the dirt?
Does anyone know of a use for vast quantities of wine bottles, the typical 750 ml. size? My family loves good wine, and the proof has taken over the garage.
I have two suggestions. 1. You can hand paint a few to look like old vases to give as gifts. 2. Run an ad in your local paper for people who like to make their own wine. You might be able to sell some of them. Of course there is the old stand by of making candle holders out of them.
You can use them as a plant border for your garden much digging involved but if they are sunk low enough would give a nice look.
Also Someone who makes their own wine might just love to get them.
Liz
The first one that comes to mind is a piggy bank/doorstop. You might fill them with other things, like small seashells, bleached pine cones, etc. Just possibly, you could persuade plants to grow in them; if you try this, you should put plenty of gravel in the bottom so the plant would have good drainage. I think it might look pretty to stuff a short twinkle light set inside -- not more than 50 lamps. Of course, there is the candle holder, and it might work better with the bottle parly filled with sand, gravel, or else water. Another idea for a sparly look would be to collect all your tinsel strands in one. Perhaps you can fit one with a pump or squirt attachment, and keep it full of lightly scented water; as the kids play with it, it will serve as a humidifier this winter!
You could certainly use them to make herbed vinegars. Remember that you will usually get a better result from an herbed vinegar if the vinegar heated almost to a boil, and then poured in over the fresh herbs. This cooks your herbs quickly, often eliminating bacteria and enzymes that make foods (even herbs) break down. With other bottles, you might try making your own extracts, such as vanilla extract.
A bottle with not even a hint of green could be a terrarium. And I do meant note even the faintest tinge of green -- green glass blocks light plants need to grow.
Perhaps you can make a coffee table by placing a board or glass panel on four or more bottles of equal height.
If you are willing to learn to use a glass cutter, more uses are possible. By removing the top, you could turn one bottle into a unique and attractive umbrella holder. In the same way, clear bottles could be transformed into bell jars, so prized by ambitious gardeners. I've seen these for sale in catalogs at outrageous prices!
Rose B, mother of three, in NC
Old wine bottles can of course be recycled, but also look great as an outline for garden beds. Just jam head first into ground, mix colors & shapes if you
want to. Also if you see any rat holes in ground, [we used to get them around
our chicken coup] just jam them in those holes. But recycling really is best.
- Linne Dodds
If you still have wine bottles left, you could use them as mosaic pieces (place the bottle in a zipper bag and use a hammer to break into pieces, make various sizes). If you have different colors your mosaic will look very colorful.
I have an old wine bottle from Italy. I dont know how old it is ,but Ihave had it for about 25-30 years. It has an inscription on the bottom of it (D.R.L.) Solaro(Italy) and the #6. It also has a picture of a soldier on the front of bottle. Can anyone tell me anything about it?
I would check a brewing store, they sell empty clean bottles for homemade wine, I don't think it would hurt to ask them about buying yours (if no chips or cracks).
Does anyone know where I can find a wine bottle that is about 4foot tall and the base is about 6-7 inches in diameter. The neck is about 3 inches around. It is green....I had one and it recently fell over and broke at the neck. I originally found it at a flea market and I really want another one. Empty or full.
I once saw them used upside-down to line a garden bed. The ones I saw were cobalt colored, but any color or color combination would work. The way it was done was she first filled the bottle with sand, then ran a dowel into the top (the dowel stuck out of the top about 6 inches), then turned the whole thing upside down & pounded the bottle into the dirt with a rubber mallet. (I'd wear safety glasses just in case!)
* If it were me, I'd not use the sand & run a strand of clear outdoor Christmas lights behind the bottles so they would light up the bottles during the night.
How do I cut wine bottles from top to bottom?
By Sam from West Chester, PA
I saw an article with pictures many years ago in Architectural Digest with cut off wine bottles of all sizes and colors. They were placed upside down, making a row. Has anyone seen this design and can help me to do this on my horseshoe driveway. I have a picture in my mind, but find it hard to put it in the ground. Thanks.
By Judy Northup from Trinidad, TX
Are you sure they were cutoff? When I did mine I left the bottles intact, I used a peace of rebar drove It in the ground about 5 in. rocked it back and forth in all directions and then shoved the wine bottle upside down in that hole than move to the next 1. That was a lot easier than trying to cut off wine bottles, I no longer have that edging throughout the yard and it's only in 1 small area and I just threw a bunch of bottles behind. My only concern would be if someone would drive over them they would definitely break.
I saw a pic of that on this site a while back. I tried to search for it but couldn't find it. It must have been feedback instead of a new topic. They weren't cut off that I recall. They were simply buried upside down, lined up side by side in a row so that the bottoms were all level. It looked pretty neat. You might have more patience searching here than I did.
Tracey in Jacksonville FL
Here is a whole path done in bottles from Garden Web.
forums2.gardenweb.com/
What are some ideas to do with wine bottles, maybe some kind of craft idea or other uses?
By Angie
I am looking for high end wine bottles for a decorating project. Any ideas where I can get them?
Doug
Did you consider approaching local area bars and restaurants? Having worked in the business, we just toss these anyway and would be happy to have them taken away for us. Approach them between the hours of 1-4pm which is the slow period and ask to speak to the floor manager or bar manager and you're sure to at least get considered.
This is a page about making a wine bottle lamp. Wine bottles inspire many crafting ideas.
The various shapes and sizes of wine bottles make them a good choice for crafts focused on decorating in many ways, such as painting, decoupaging, or cutting them down, to use as decor or gifts. This page contains ideas for decorating wine bottles.
You can create a lovely, repurposed decoration or vase by painting the inside or outside of a wine bottle. This is a page about painting wine bottles.
Reuse your emptied wine bottles with this adorable grape leaf craft. This is a page about grape leaf wine bottle decoration.
Recycle a special wine bottle for an inexpensive gift. This page is about empty wine bottle gift ideas.
ThriftyFun is one of the longest running frugal living communities on the Internet. These are archives of older discussions.
I drink a glass of wine every evening with my meal for my health. I've accumulated many wine bottles and was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how I could use these empty bottles.
I have about ten empty wine bottles and would love a crafty way to reuse the. I was thinking of using dishwashing liquid and putting the bottles on my windowsill, but what kind of "top" would i use?
