Wine Bottles Peel and Paint

This was a fun but dangerous project. When we decided to go with the grape and wine them, it was partially because I'd seen some postings on Pinterest of painted wine bottles. I loved them and thought that would be such an affordable way to have center pieces.

First I asked my friends and family to please give me their empty wine bottles. My mother-in-law was awesome help. She contacted her book club and since they were avid wine drinkers and one of them was dating a guy with a wine store, I had more wine bottles than I needed in no time. With the bottles she got and the ones my then fiance had emptied, I had over 90 bottles in various sizes and colors. Then I had to figure out how to peel them all.

I looked online and some methods said to soak the bottles in hot water and then peel. That was not working out so well for me. Another said to bake the bottles and then peel the labels. that worked for some bottles, but what really worked was a combination of the method. I dipped the bottles in a sink full of water and left about a teaspoonful of water in each bottle and placed them in the oven and set the oven to 350F.

 Note the oven was cold when I placed the bottles in. I cooked the bottles from cold to hot. When the oven was at temperature, I let it stay in there for another 5 minutes the removed and peeled the labels off. The adhesive was loose and the labels peeled off easily for most of the bottles. For those that were difficult, I scrubbed it with a scour pad to removed all the residue.

By the way, this project took a while to complete. Since I started the peeling process in October, I had to wait for another warm day for my now husband to paint the bottles.

 He also cut off the bottom of a third of the bottles to be used for the artificial candles. Then before he painted those I used painter's tape to make different styles on the bottles to allow the light from the candles through.

 Using a cardboard box as his paint station, he spray painted a third of the bottles in blue, the other third and the ones with tape were all done in silver.

 Following the Christmas Holidays, we went to Michael's and bought out all of their silver tings at the 70% discount and used them to stage the centerpieces for the reception.

 For the final look at the wedding, we placed the bottles on a mirror and used corks with slices in them to put the table numbers at each table. If there's anything I could have done differently, I would have maybe used ostrich feathers for the fillers. Something more eye catching, but I still loved the final look.