Survey says super cool :). I think they look really romantic. I would definitely go with the rose petals to make it even more so. I think they'll fit with the bottles better than the rocks. Nice work, they look even better than the $200 ones! :)
I really like those holders. Romantic and dramatic but not too much foo foo to it.
Oooh so pretty! Great job!!! Very romantic and warm, I love it!
Jealous!!! I wanted to do this same thing, but everyone told me the glass would get too hot & either crack or explode :( but you proved them wrong! I know I should of went ahead and done them anyway. They look SOO pretty!!!
Very very cute!!!! along the same idea, if you wanted to mix things up you could also do something like this.
So pretty! Also, a great excuse to drink some wine (not that we need an excuse) and free up some bottles!
I love that. I hadn't seen it before. We are doing these wine bottles as candle holders on some of our tables (on the back of the cake table, on our gifts table...) But I don't like how these are sooo tall. It would be hard to talk to others at the table. Now, I might do your idea at some of the tables and miz it up. I LOVE it!
How are you cutting them? Is it working out alright? Are you worried about the candles dripping onto that table linnens?
[attachment=1612810,200726]
Thanks, everyone! I think they rock too, but whenever I do DIY stuff, I always worry that maybe it's not as cool as I think. It's good to run it past some other eyes and get some feedback!
@peacegrl099: I will PM you with the cutting details!
We are going to put something under the bottles to avoid ruining the linens. Our venue has mirrors that I think will work for this. If the mirrors aren't big enough, I'm going to have to brainstorm and find something else for sure, because you are right that the wax will get on the table if there's nothing under it. I'm also trying to find candles that will burn really well without a lot of wax spillage, because if the wax does spill over, it can plug up the bottom of the bottle, and then the candle doesn't get enough air and it goes out. Anyone know of candles that burn more or less straight down, without spilling all of their wax?
Also, I will be performing a burn test to try and burn the candles for at least 6 hours. I too have fears of the bottles getting hot and exploding! And they do tend to get really hot at the tops, so we'll need to put a little card on the table to warn our guests not to touch them.
I love these! How did you cut the bottoms of the wine bottles? I'll cross my fingers they don't explode on you! Maybe a back up could be the flameless candles or something smaller like a tea light
These are beautiful! I will definitely steal this idea-not for my wedding - but I think it would also be beautiful for summer parties on the patio.
You can get dripless candles many places.
A round coaster may fit perfectly inside your bottles to protect the table linens.
I'm doing this exact same thing! I love that there is a picture for it now so I can show rather than explain! My FI doesn't quite "get it" - GORGEOUS!!!
Gorgeous I love it! Romantic and vintage in a way. Oooh and round coaster is a great idea! You can get them from BB&B for pretty cheap: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=119892&RN=0
Oooooo I wanted to incorporate wine bottles too! Great idea! I was also curious how you are going about cutting them. One way to avoid dripping would be to buy the LED flameless candles. My mom has one that actually looks real. I was surprised.
those look great! i'm not ever a fan of those rocks though. rose petals would look a lot better!
Since a few posters have asked, here is how we cut the bottles (sorry, this is a little long, but it's really easy to do!):
We followed the advice of Dan Rojas and used the scoring/hot water method. You can watch his video here.
You definitely have to get a good score on the bottle - no breaks in the score line, and as straight around as you can get it, but it does not have to be deep at all. It's really more of a scratch than anything. We did not buy the $45 scoring tool that he uses in that video. Instead, I bought a scoring tool at Home Depot ($9), which we placed parallel to our countertop, sandwiched between two phonebooks. My FI then pushes down on the phone books to keep the tool in place, then I place the bottle on the counter, push it into the blade of the scoring tool, and rotate the bottle. You can place the tool in between different pages in the books to put it at different heights and thus cut the bottles at different heights. You could probably also use a vise to hold the tool in place, but we didn't have one!
Then, over the sink, slowly pour a stream of boiling water over the cut line for about thirty seconds. We like to rotate the bottle while doing this part, to make sure the entire line gets hot. Then place the cut line under a stream of cool water from the faucet. If the cut end doesn't fall off after a few seconds in the cool water, go back to pouring the hot water over it. It will most likely fall off then.
This doesn't work perfectly *every* time - I'd say probably every 4 out of 5 bottles works great, then we'll end up with one that splinters and forms vertical cracks. So you'll probably need to collect more bottles than you need in the end, because a few will get messed up.
*One other important note!* With this cutting method, the cut on the bottom is almost *too* good. There is very little air that can get into the bottle under that smooth cut, so there's no flow from the top of the bottle to the bottom, and when we first put candles under the bottles, they would only burn for a minute before going out. What we did to fix this was take our Dremel drill and use one of the bits to sand out a little hump on the bottom cut edge of the bottle. This allows enough air to get in to feed the candle, and we just turn the side with the hump toward the center of the centerpiece. I fear the putting coasters under the bottles would snuff out the airflow again, but I will give it a try and see what happens!
LOVE THEM!
We're using wine bottles for our centerpieces as well, just in a much different way. We can't have candles in our venue :(
You can get the wine bottles free, we had the Applebee's close to our house and one of our BM's is a server, they saved the bottles and we picked them up weekly!
These look really cool.
Can you keep the bottoms of the wine bottles after you cut them or are they destroyed? You could use the bottoms as the candle plate, no?
@MasqueradeMom: Ooh, good tip. We are up to 110 bottles already just from family & friends, but I need more of the bigger ones for the center of the piece - I will hit up our local Applebee's and see what they say!
http://www.homebrewit.com/aisle/p/5237
The larger (1.5L) bottles here for a reasonable price.
@Bubu82: The manager was great when I explained what we needed them for. He just asked that we stop by once or twice a week to pick them up because they can't store them.
You could really ask anyone that sells wine! I really love these!
@ATP2011: Re: using the bottom of the bottle underneath to catch the wax - many of the bottles I have received have a big hump in the bottom of the bottle, so the candle would need to be glued onto it. Plus, we've been cutting them high enough up that balancing the top on the bottom would be a little precarious. And again, you'd have that airflow issue.
The bottoms could make good tiny cups for storage, or maybe an ashtray, if you are a smoker...But the cut line is a little sharp, so I'd sand it down before using it for anything else.
I'd have flower petals and flowers scattered among the bottles. Love your unique touch! Very very cute! You could put them on round mirrors if you're worried about wax hitting tabletops or on linens. it would also magnify the candlelight too.
creative! how on earth do you get the bottoms cut off?
also, the bottoms aren't scratchy and dangerous are they?
Have you thought about maybe uses the flameless candles?
I got a bunch for a really good price at save on crafts.com
THANK YOU so much for posting this! I had that same picture bookmarked...and all of my FI's family was scratching their heads trying to figure this out (including his grandfather who does stained glass). We knocked out 8 today (with 2 fails--very thick-glassed champagne bottles, though).
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Hey bees,
So, my inspiration board for the wedding includes these really cool wine bottle candle holders:
See them there, in the top row on the left?
Well, to buy those big ones shown in that image is hideously expensive (like $199 per bottle, at least), so my FI and I are working on making our own. We're collecting different wine bottles from friends and family, removing the labels, and cutting the bottoms off of them. Then, we're placing them over candles. We got one set done, and I thought I'd get the hive's opinions on them!
So what do you think? We're still looking at different options for the scatter on the table. We might even do rose petals instead of the rocks, which I think would give it a feel similar to what Mrs. Lemon did.
Survey says: cool? or not so cool? Any ideas for improving them?