Decorated Wine Bottle

So Pinterest is trending all these decorated wine bottle lamps so I thought I'd take my turn at it.  Combining a bunch of little things I liked from other people's onto my own bottle.

So first off I drilled a hole in the bottom of the bottle, I have another post on how to do that if you need or you can find other tutorials on Pinterest.  Then I decorated the bottle with mancala beads to make bunches of grapes.  I made the biggest bunch on the bottom since they add a lot of weight onto the bottle.  If you go to A.C. Moore or Michael's or any other craft store they should have leaf shaped beads I used for the tops of the bunches.  Thankfully for my friend's 21 birthday we had custom bottles of wine with nice labels so I could use that.  If you want to take the label off your bottle and work with that you can try peeling it off yourself or put the bottle in a pot of boiling water and the label comes off fairly easily.

Here's some close ups of the bunches of grapes if you're like me and it helps to see something to copy.

Definitely going to make some more parts to the wine bottle decorating, I have a couple more ideas for more bottles already.

Beach Shadow Box

So I absolutely love shadow boxes, I love to make them of my trips.  For this one I went to Barbados.  Used a picture I had taken and added sand to the bottom of the box and whatever I could find from my trip. I have a shell, a Bajan penny, my plane ticket and a $2 I had leftover.  Love how it turned out :)

Foreign Currency

So next shadow box I made from my travels, made out of the change I had left over.  Went to Barbados, all the leftover change I had I hot glued to a piece of black paper and put in a frame.  Black on black, looks more rich and it pops more now.  New and interesting way to display foreign currency!

Drilling Holes in Bottles

So this was a fun little adventure I tried.  Do not start this unless you have a lot of time on your hands.  Make sure you have the right bit too.  Put masking tape down on the bottle then just start drilling.  Go very slow and keep it wet.  The water will keep the dust (which is carcinogenic) down and the drill cool.  It may take an hour or more but that's okay.  If you go slow it won't crack.  The average drill runs at 900 reps a minute and you're going to want to go at around 280-290 rpm, so I really mean slow.  But there are so many things you can do with the wine bottle once it's done!

Vacation Shadow Box

If you're anything like me I save tickets.  I love tickets from anything I do, shows, buss passes, museums, whatever it is I will hold on to it.  To remember my trips I make shadow boxes.  For this one I printed out a map for the background then put all my plane tickets, show tickets, museum and aquarium passes along with one wine bottle since Australia is known for their wine.  Behind the map I have papers from my trip, notes people wrote, local maps and a program from the opera house, anything I think I'll want to look back on later! 

Easy Sew Fabric Bowls

I learned to make these bowls with my roommate.  Incredibly easy and  now I use them to make gift baskets for people.  And it's a great way to use up scrap fabric!  All you'll need is:

• About half a yard of 100% cotton fabric.
• Cotton clothesline
• Knitting needle
• Glue stick

First cut up your fabric into 3/4 inch strips and start wrapping.  I try to wrap about a yard of clothesline to start with.  Use the glue stick to glue the ends of the fabric to the rope.  You'll want to start sewing right after this, if you wait a day the glue hardens, not good for your sewing machine.

Once you've wrapped enough of the fabric start wrapping the clothesline in a circle, once it's the size of a $0.50 piece you should start sewing.  

Sew an 'x' on the bottom with a straight stitch.  Then switch to a zig-zag stitch and start sewing as close to the center as possible.  

Continue a zig-zag stitch until you have a desired width for the bottom of your bowl.

Mark your place on the bowl, I use a pin.  Now you're going to need to lift the base up as you sew.  The best way to measure is to start off with one finger lifting it and go around once, next time you go around use two fingers and from them on use three "fingers space."  The higher you raise the bowl, the steeper the edge of your bowl will be. 

 Once you have the desired height on your bowl cut the clothesline at an angle and wrap the end.

To get the end as seamless as possible use the knitting needle to push the edge as close to the bowl as possible.  Once you've sewn that redo the whole edge of the bowl to prevent any extra fraying.  

And then you have a completed bowl!!

Tree Wall Art

Helped my roommate with this yesterday.  She saw something very similar on Pinterest but with buttons.  Used the same idea of a tree in the wind but she used mancala beads for a different look.  Very simple, just paint the tree and ground and hot glue the beads where ever you like.  She used red and yellow ground for a more autumn type feel but different color combinations could be interesting.