Wine Bottle Centerpieces

Today's Silver Price: $31.79/t.oz.



My wedding centerpiece planning has come full circle. Forget the pressed flowers, forget creating my own floral arrangements, it's back to wine bottles. Check out some pics I found on the internet today:

I'm definitely going to need a bottle cutter for these. I've done some brief browsing on the internet and found several for around $30. Well worth the investment I think.

From this last one I was thinking of using the greenery around the bottom of the wine bottles. Apparently you can just spray evergreens with adhesive and stick them to glass. Not sure how long they would last, but it looks really cool! I also thought about wrapping lace around the bottom half of the bottles. I guess there are a ton of things that could be added! I'll use the battery operated tea light candles to make it easy.

I'll be ordering a bottle cutter this weekend- and soon I'll finally put my stock of empty wine bottles (which are currently cluttering up the attic) to good use!

DIY Wax Paper Lanterns

Today's Silver Price: $32.17/t.oz.

And now for something completely different... wax paper lanterns.

Happy 1st Day of Spring!

One of the really fun parts of planning a wedding for me has been finding bargains, deals, and DIY projects. I found a great website recently called A Practical Wedding which offers tips and ideas on planning an affordable wedding without all the unnecessary fluff and ridiculousness.

I really should stop looking at all of these websites and articles. So far I've changed my idea for centerpieces three times. Maybe four. I started off wanting to use wine bottles for centerpieces somehow. I was thinking of cutting the bottles and putting candles in them. Then I thought I should probably have a florist do the centerpieces. Then I thought I could do the floral and greenery centerpieces myself. Now however, I have stumbled upon the next great idea. Wax paper lanterns, or luminarias as they are called in this article (from A Practical Wedding).

The luminarias are made by ironing pressed flowers and greenery between two sheets of waxed paper. The crafter has created cubes using four waxed paper walls taped together. Simply put a candle inside and you've made magic! I think I would make taller structures to get a more dramatic look, but I love the possibilities with this project! I was out for a walk today and I was taking note of all of the bushes on my route that could possibly be used. I would also use battery operated tea lights as I think open flame might be risky.

So until the next great idea comes my way I'll be experimenting with pressed flowers and waxed paper. Sounds like fun to me!

Getting Ready; Wine Bottles Revisited; Hammers and Anvils

Today's Silver Price: $31.96/t.oz.

Getting Ready!

I received a shipment  yesterday from Fire Mountain Gems- 18 different colors of 6mm round glass beads! I immediately started making bracelets and before I knew it four hours had gone by, lol. It was a very productive evening!

I have two events this weekend. One is a holiday craft/vendor fair at a local high school. I've done a fair there previously with not much success. However this time I will return with a much larger inventory and better displays. I think I am going to stick with hanging my earrings on the window screens. It's more attractive, and so what if it takes longer to present them to the customer? I don't think I'll be that swamped... but you never know!

On Sunday a friend of mine is holding a holiday boutique party at her home. She is having Avon, Tupperware, myself and some other vendors. Pretty sweet idea... maybe she will become a vendor fair promoter in the future.

I haven't worked on any paintings, I have focused my energy on jewelry alone. Trying to focus on that 20% effort which should lead to 80% revenue. I may over the next few days work on a few watercolors already in progress, but I don't think I'll be creating anything new.

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Wine Bottles Revisited

I tried breaking wine bottles again into pieces I could use for jewelry. I was able to break the bottles this time, I just had to use more force. I had an idea to use different colored pieces to create glass snowflake ornaments but I had trouble getting the pieces into the shapes I wanted. I broke the bottles inside of two plastic bags. Then I tried grinding the edges down with a Dremel grinding stone to change the shape, but that did not work very well. I then used a cutting wheel on the Dremel. I found that if I scored a line in the glass piece with the cutting wheel, I could then use a pliers to break off the excess. I seem to remember a video I saw once of a stained glass artisan doing exactly that... my brain must have stored those images deep in the library of my head.

The whole thing was  very slow and tedious and might be too ambitious of a project. I might just not have the right Dremel bits. I think next I'll see if I am able to drill holes through the glass pieces so that they could be used in jewelry.

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Hammers and Anvils

In the spring I'm hoping to purchase some hammers and anvils so I can be a rockstar like this guy. I also want to learn how to solder so I can create more complex pieces. And I want to get a kiln and try out metal clay (clay that when fired burns away to leave metal)... and I want to get a jewelry tumbler...  So much to do, so little time!

Wine Bottles

Today's Silver Price: $32.64/t.oz.

I've had this idea for a while now to make jewelry out of recycled glass from wine bottles. The idea was inspired from an empty Riesling bottle that was a beautiful blue-green color. I have always loved glass beads, their transparency and the way they reflect light. I thought large glass pieces would make really interesting jewelry components.

At first I thought about cutting the neck of the bottle into rings and using those as jewelry components. Then I thought about cutting or breaking the bottle into pieces and shaping and smoothing them to use in earring designs.

I learned that wine bottles are a lot stronger than they seem! One day I took an empty wine bottle outside, wrapped it in a plastic bag and hit it with a hammer. The hammer bounced! I kept hitting the bottle trying to shatter it into pieces (so I could at least practice smoothing and shaping the pieces). However the bottle would not break!

I have a glass cutting tool that I haven't really tried yet. It is a small handheld tool with a cutting wheel on one end. The tool is supposed to score the glass and allow you to break pieces off. I'm not sure that it was designed for cutting wine bottles... but it's the best option right now. I have seen tools sold online that are specifically made for cutting the tops off of wine bottles to make them into drinking glasses. I may purchase one and see if it will be useful.

Wine bottles come in several different colors- clear, green, blue, brown and of course blue-green. Some of the shades are really beautiful and I am excited to incorporate them into new jewelry designs... if I can figure out how to break them into pieces!