My mom recently sent me a photo of some wine bottles-turned-candle-holding-centerpieces and suggested that we should try making some of our own. The cost to buy them was a little much, so we decided to give it a try for the upcoming couples shower we would be hosting for my brother and his fiance. Here’s an inspiration photo I found on Pinterest:

First order of business: collecting wine bottles, which was obviously the hardest and most unpleasant part of the project. We collected a variety of colors and sizes so as to have a nice variety for the centerpieces. We planned to make 3 sets of displays, so we knew we needed 14-15 bottles. Here’s how we created our centerpieces.

Supplies:
wine bottles
glass scoring tool
yarn
acetone
bucket of ice water

Step 1: Soak bottles in water. We kept ours in a cooler full of water in the garage for several days and then pulled off as much of the labels as we were able to. Most of the labels came off easily, but we used goo-gone pens for the stubborn pieces.

I googled around online to find some tutorials on how to cut glass without a fancy, expensive tool. I found two different methods — one involved a $6 glass cutting tool, and the other involved nail polish remover and yarn. We tried each of them to no avail. So we combined the methods and finally had some success.

Step 2: Tape off the bottles toward the bottom with painter’s tape to create a straight line. Then, score the bottle with the glass cutting tool. Pretty firm pressure is needed in order to get a nice, solid score all the way around. Remove tape.

Next up, yarn! Why do they sell yarn in such humongous sizes? We used about 1/1000 of it for this project.

Step 3: Cut a piece and tie around each bottle, then slip it back off and dunk in a cup of nail polish remover (acetone).

Step 4: Next, time to light them on fire! The yarn should stay lit for about 30 seconds. When the fire goes out, dunk in a bucket (or sink) full of ice water. This is where we had some difficulty with about 1/2 of the bottles. Several of them just popped off immediately upon being submerged in the cold water, and other took some banging against the side of the bucket to pop off. A couple were incredibly stubborn, so Craig re-scored them and we did the process all over again.

Voila! Poppin’ bottles!

This is one of the best, most smooth cuts that we got. Some were a bit more jagged, but we had a plan to cover those up in the displays.

I first tried black stones as a base to set the candles and bottles on and to cover up the jagged edges on some of the bottles, but the rocks were way too slippery. They sure do look pretty, though, don’t they?

The second option was sand, and it was a winner. It held both the candles and bottles in place and it covered all the imperfections. I found that this worked best when the candles were thin enough to leave some breathing room inside each bottle… otherwise, the flames quickly went out. I hope you find this little “how to” helpful!