What to do with old wine bottles?

[flypony]

Please, humor the packrat in me, for just a moment.

Any creative ideas on what I can do with some interesting old wine bottles? Anytime I see an interesting wine, I tend to buy it, and of course, drink it. Many of these wines have interesting names or bottles, so I kind of hate to throw them out, but what to do with the empties?

A friend of mine did a table top in wine corks, which was cool, but I just can't think of anything interesting to do with these bottles. Maybe someone needs to tell me to suck it up and throw them away, I dunno!

[Georgia]

Two things came to mind- one is to dig a narrow trench and line the bottles up as a border for your plants.
I've always thought that and using odd salad plates (especially blue and white patterns) in a trench as a border were the coolest garden ideas.

But, you could get a bottle tree. (I secretly covet them...)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...8/ai_n19510920

http://usads.ms11.net/bottletreeman.html

I love the blue ones but to have a tree that holds bottles from a special evening with friends or a lovely dinner would be so great.

Check out www.thebottletreeman.com

(He lives down the way from an old family friend and is a really nice guy.)


You can also do a fence with them, but I like these other two suggestions more...

[Tess]

Georgia, we posted at the same time! And, about the same thing.

[artemis]

i have a wine bottle collection on top of one set of kitchen cabinets. it dresses up the kitchen without making the actual cooking/food prep space cluttery.
i used to just save the labels and use them in collages but sometimes it's hard to remove them from the bottles (and, of course, if the bottles themselves are what's interesting then that wouldn't work anyway).

[JMG]

Please keep in mind that I am not very artsy,craftsy.
The first thing that came to my mind was candle holders. Not too inventive, but that's what we do with a lot of our used wine bottles. There used to be wicks and stuff you could buy to make them into lamps.
I had a friend once who would melt them flat for ashtrays and such. Don't know what process he used to do it but I remember he made a really cool looking platter out of several different colored bottles.

[karissa]

I have seen people make them into wind chimes before, but they were melted flat and I'm not sure how to do that. It was cool though.

[George Spelvin]

I used to frequent a restaurant that had very nice lighting fixtures made using wine bottles.

On the ceiling, they had boxed around light bulbs and suspended wine bottles from eye-hooks on the ceiling inside the box (maybe 8 or 9 each). The mismatched bottles were hung at varying heights by raffia tied to their necks such that they hung at slight, random angles. The open-ended box shielded the light from the sides, and the dangling bottoms of the wine bottles made a sort of casual chandelier.

I've thought often of building a floor lamp of similar design.

[artemis]

you could always build your own village

[flypony]

Hmmm...the bottle tree idea is interesting, and my stepdad could whip one of those up for me in no time.

If I had a flower bed that didn't border the yard, then the flower bed idea might be really neat. Only thing is that I mow the yard with a tractor/finish mower, so anything glass bordering the yard probably wouldn't last long around here.

I'll have to trot into the kitchen and look at the tops of my cabinets. I'm thinking there is not enough room for a wine bottle (cabinets sit high), but I'll have to go look.

In college, I had bunches of bottles that I used as candle holders. Of course, those were the "drinking on a budget" days. Thankfully, my taste and budget have improved since then....nothing worse than a cheap wine hangover!

My mom was given a really neat hummingbird feeder made from a wine bottle several years ago. It is very pretty and unique, but unfortunately, it leaks.

[Sappho]

I am working on a mortor and bottle wall. make a footer, stand them up, mortor inbetween. Mine is going to be only one row high, out in the garden. Throw in some marbles, keys, anyother interesting treasures that will hold up in the weather. Sepending on how you space the bottles, a form might be required.