Repurposed Beer/Pop Bottles

Oh, hello there.  It's been awhile....

I have been ridiculously busy with work, my apologies for taking F O R E V E R in getting a post up.  I'm working on a few items for my sister-in-law's bridal shower, so I'll be sharing those with you over the next few weeks.

The bride is a HUGE fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers - and that is an understatement.  She's such a huge fan that her wedding colors are black and yellow!  So me and the other bridesmaids agreed that a sunflower theme with lots of black and yellow would be appropriate for her shower.

She's also a big beer lover (I mean... aren't we all?!).  So I decided to try to incorporate that into the shower.  I have seen these painted bottles all over Pinterest, which I think are beautiful... but not quite what I needed.  I've also seen some beer/pop bottles wrapped in twine, jute, or yarn.  I also think these are great, but again... not quite what I was looking for!

So I combined a few of these ideas and ended up with these yellow bottles wrapped partly with jute and twine.

So here's what to do:

1. Drink beer (or pop if you prefer).  As if you need an excuse.  Save your bottles.

2. Remove the labels from the bottles.  I found that soaking them in hot water for a few minutes does the trick pretty well.  It even takes the sticky icky residue off!

3. Spray your bottles with Frosted Glass spray paint.  This will help the colored paint stick better, otherwise it will scratch off the glass very easily.  OPTIONAL - you can also paint the bottles with a spray primer over the frosted glass paint. This seems to help with the durability of the bottles, although the frosted glass paint may be enough if you don't anticipate much abuse to the bottles.

4. Paint your bottles in the desired color.  I'm not particular to brand.  I use Rustoleum a lot because it's pretty inexpensive and they have lots of fun colors.  Whatever you do, don't by spray paint from JoAnn or Michales - it's REALLY expensive there.  Try Hobby Lobby or even Lowes or Home Depot.  You can find the same exact paint there for about 1/2 the price.

5. After the bottles have dried, wrap them in jute and/or twine to your liking.

6. Sit back and look at what you've accomplished!

Here's a closer look.  You can see that I made them all a little different.  Some I used a thin twine and wrapped it all jee jobber (that's my husband's favorite word and I promised him I'd use it in a blog some day, so today's his day!).  Some I wrapped very neatly with the thin twine.  And others I used a thicker jute.  I found some wonderful jute at JoAnn for about $3 for a huge roll - it's in the jewelry section if you're looking!

I think I plan on putting sunflowers in all of them, but I may end up leaving some of them without flowers just as decoration.  The Bridal Shower is in August, so I'll be sure to post some pics of them "in action."

Now, go drink :)