If you think you aren’t very artistic or good at painting but still want to repurpose bottles to decorate your house… guess what? You have come to the right place. In this article, I am going to suggest a few alternatives to bottle painting using art supplies such as yarn, twine, burlap fabric, lace, liquid glue, and so on.
Sound good?
Let’s get started upcycling glass bottles!
Prepare Your Bottles
Begin by washing off your bottles with hot soapy water. Soak them in for a few hours if the labels are too stubborn to come off. Then dry them off completely or let them air dry.
Add Burlap and Lace
There are different ways of decorating your washed-off bottles. The easiest method is to use a combination of burlap fabric and lace.
Cut a small rectangular piece of burlap. The length should be big enough to go around the bottle and the width should be slightly bigger than the width of your lace. The length of the lace should be the same as the length of the burlap. Place the lace on the middle of the burlap, leaving equal spacing on the top and bottom. Because of the textures of both fabrics they will hang onto each other and you won’t need to glue them together.
The last step is to glue the burlap to the bottle towards the middle of it and — tada! You have quickly completed a simple but amazing bottle decor project.
Wrap the Bottle with Yarn and Twine
Another way to upcycle your bottle is using yarn and/or twine. You will also need liquid glue for this method.
Start by gluing a little area at a time and tightly stick the yarn/twine to the bottle making symmetric circles. Tip: Start towards the bottom and work your way up. This method is easy but needs a little bit of time and patience, especially at the part of the bottle where it starts narrowing.
You can use a single-colored yarn/twine or have two or more bands of different colors. Feel free really get creative and experiment here! Mix and match between yarn and twine too. Your project could consist of a single bottle or a group of several bottles. You can stop at this point or can add the burlap/lace design from the method above on top of the yarn/twine design.
Optionally, you could also attach self-sticking flowers, gems, jewelry or ribbon to enhance your bottles that you decorated using any of the methods above.
As I mentioned above, this method does take a bit of time and patience, and care should be taken to wrap the twine evenly and neatly. However, the end results are well worth the effort, as you will wind up with a classy and unique piece of art for your home or apartment.
There are so many more fun and creative methods for decorating your glass bottles, such as the following, as seen in these YouTube videos:
- Covering them with tissue paper and sparkly beads.
- Applying beautiful designs using a decoupage technique.
- Gluing on foam cut-out flowers, hearts and any other shapes you can think of.
- Upcycling them by turning them into useful household or garden items.
Let your imagination run wild, and soon you’ll have created one-of-a-kind, hand-made decorations for your home (or to give away as gifts)! 🙂
This article was written by my friend Anushree Neurgaonkar, who also provided the gorgeous bottle craft handiwork and the photos. Anu’s creativity and enthusiasm for art and crafting is such an inspiration! — Angie
