Wine Bottle Vases

We had an awesome party to celebrate the twins' 30th birthday last month.
We had great food and wine. And with wine, of course, comes wine bottles.
So with this great collection of different shapes and shades of wine bottles left over, I made some great stone vases.  And, of course, we are recycling...
today's project is:


bottles using a flash

 Wine Bottle Vases

You will need:
~an empty wine bottle, with the labels removed
~Granite/Stone textured spray paint
~Painter's tape
~scissors

natural light through the bottles


To get the labels
off, you can put them
in an oven on low heat.
Most glues will come off with heat. Afterward, you might want to use GooGone to get any residue off.

I put my bottles in a pot of boiling water to loosen the glue. It worked pretty well. I put water inside of them, so they would not float.
Still had to use a straight edge razor blade to scrape off some pesky pieces.

Then you will need to 'mask' off a design with the painter's tape (which is blue and easily removed, unlike regular masking tape which can be toooooo sticky).

Take scissors and cut shapes (or use strips if you want stripes) and place on the clean bottle. Remember these masked shapes will show the bottle color through.

I found the lighter green bottles were a bit nicer, because they let the light show through better.

You can find the Stone spray paint at the hardware store. I used the brown color on three of them, and a white color on one.  The brown color looks more natural, more grainy------->

After you have the bottle taped off, take it outside and spray. This will take a few coats, with 20 min. in between drying time. To spray this stuff, you have to 'spritz' it on a little bit at a time, moving around the bottle.  One thing I found, especially with the darker color, is that if it goes on too thick, you can't see the blue tape under it, and that makes it difficult to peel off later. Because you can't see the tape. So don't put more than 3 coats on.

After it has dried, peel off the tape pieces carefully. The paint will chip off if you pick at it. So no unnecessary scratching.
I used silk flowers in them, but fresh baby's breath or big sunflowers would be stunning in these as well.

tip of the day:
Sometimes I use a recipe that calls for just a bit of lemon or lime zest. And then I have the rest of it leftover. Now, I cut it up into slices, and put them in an ice cube tray, fill up with water and freeze. So when I need an ice cube for water or ice tea or a special drink, I can have ice and a citrus slice all in one.  This is great for punches too. (you can find ice cube trays at resale shops, cheap. Handy to have for lots of stuff).

That's all for this week...
:D