Wine Bottle Pendant Lamps

It seems that lately I've been hearing an awful lot about wine bottles. Being someone who doesn't partake myself I decided that I'd work with Perrier bottles. But no one told me that there was a distinct learning curve when cutting glass bottles. A quick trip to the hobby store and a few attempts these beautiful pendant lamps came together!

For this project you will need:

Wine bottles

Light socket kits

Liquid Fusion

Wood dowel

Glass pebbles (look in the decor area around floral departments)

Not gonna lie... cutting wine bottles isn't going to go perfectly on your first attempt. I tried several methods and the one I liked best came from Saved by Love Creations. With a bit more practice I think I can cut rings like Johnnie! This method includes a bottle cutter that scores the glass followed by a butane torch. 

You can also cut wine bottles using nail polish remover and string with help from Jade at Jaderbomb or with a scorer and boiling water, though I couldn't get this method to work it's supposed to lead to the least sanding which would be awesome!

Whatever method you choose plan on plenty of practice and lots have lots of glass to practice on. You won't get the perfect cut the first go 'round!

Here is my bottle. Hardly a perfect cut but good enough since we'll be covering it up with stones. Be sure that the bottom of your glass is NOT jagged and will NOT cut you before moving onto this step. If in doubt, don't use it because glass cuts can be nasty business.

Give the outside of your bottle a quick sand to score taking care not to breathe in the dust or get it into your eyes. Sanding is IMPERATIVE to a good hold.

Grab your Liquid Fusion and get comfy. This takes a while but cures so well that it's worth the effort. Place a small dollop of Liquid Fusion near the rim of the bottle.

And place your first glass gem. You'll need to hold into place until the glue dries well enough to hold on its own.

Continue adding gems around in rings from the bottom to right below the neck.

Do this for as many bottles as you have.

This is a great time to check out TV you're behind on or catch a few movies. Again, this is slow going but it's easy and the results are worth it!

Allow the bottles to dry 24-48 hours.

This is the end of your light kit. Mine uses an itty bitty bulb (because it's what I had on hand) but they have others that will put out considerably more light by using bigger bulbs. Remove the metal bracket that comes on around the socket.

Above the socket and the cord that goes into the end, there is a little space where you can slip the end of a knife or screwdriver. Gently pry that up to pop the lid off.

Remove the cord. It will easily come out by simply pulling up.

Thread the cord through the bottle and put the cord back as you found it. Slip the cap back onto the socket. Give a test to make sure the wire is back as it should be and the lamp lights up.

In order to get our light to hang where we want it and not in the neck, grab a piece of wooden dowel and cut down to 2-3 inches in length. Paint white so it will be less obvious. This one has a tapered end which is nice but not necessary.

Get your cord where you want it to be from inside of the glass. Next jam that dowel piece as far into the neck as you can. With enough pressure, it will hold the wire in place and keep your lamp light exactly where you want it.

A quick way to hang is to take a metal tie (this one came around the cord in the packaging), form a loop where you want the lamp to hang from...

and wrap the tie around and around to secure a loop for hanging.

Finish applying your glass pieces to the neck and give a good 24-48 hours to cure completely.

And if you're wondering, we didn't gem up the necks before now because you will wind up kind of manhandling that area to get the lights in place. With enough force you can knock your gems off a you'll be back here again anyway!

There they are! My larger and smaller wine bottle pendants. These both have a considerable amount of heft to them but hanging for quite some time there have been no issues with the cord  holding.

The different colored gems add a lot of interest to the look and I love how the colors glow!

To be honest I think I'll be changing out the light kits with ones that will hold regular sized bulbs to get more light out of them, but for ambient lighting or a nightlight these guys are pretty perfect.

Oh, and I'll be switching to a daylight or Reveal type of bulb so that the colors that come through are more true to the stones and less yellow.

So what do you think? A little bit of Liquid Fusion and some gems later and I've got some eye catching lighting... will you make some, too?

I hope you enjoyed this post, and if you have feel free to stop by and give me a shout at Dream a Little Bigger

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