Guest post by Shireen Quodosi
What comes more easily in this economy than an assortment of empty wine bottles after you’ve just thrown a smashing get-together? With the preference being on sourcing cheap entertaining ideas, most people now see staying at home with a good meal and great wine as a viable alternative to spending money on restaurants and clubs.
Wine Bottle Ideas:
There are a number of ways to reuse wine bottles. Among the more common ideas are reusing them as water pitchers, votive vases, torches, and flower bed liners. However, there are dozens of other smart options that are rarely explored.
Rewined Recycled Glassware – Get uniquely hued wine bottle glassware made from orphaned bottles left behind at local restaurants and bars.
Water Feeders – On a very hot day or when you’re away, fill the bottles of water and stick them into the pot or soil near your plant. The water will slowly percolate from the bottle and into the soil.
Wine Bottle Chandeliers – In addition to the popular row lighting and pendant lighting, Pottery Barn put together an interesting chandelier with wine bottles strung around it. Even though four dozen other people will likely have the same statement piece, at least you know it’s a unique sustainable element in your home. Plus it catches the light beautifully during the day and especially at sunset.
Wine Bottle Cheese Boards – What could be quainter than using a cheese board made out of wine at you next cocktail. Apparently that’s exactly what Vineyard Designs thought when they started offering their custom recycled wine glass boards.
Wine Bottle Building Blocks
Rather than just one element, your entire home or venue can serve as a creatively designed showcase – a testimony of your creativity and commitment to sustainability.
Wine bottles can be used to create an interesting mosaic-styled wall piece. The most gorgeous of these displays is just outside of Montreal at a place called Bottle Houses, Prince Edward Island.
PEI is known for its lush landscapes and pastoral living, which makes the wine bottle homes stand out that much more, offering a mixture of ingenious modern design paired with an idyllic setting; and the combination works brilliantly.
This theme of bottle wall art has been running strong from coast to coast. Javier’s, an upscale restaurant in Crystal Cove, features bottle-inspired wall art as a key feature in their eclectic setting.
Using wine bottles as building blocks shows creativity and ingenuity that can be carried to stylishly eccentric levels when used in restaurants. Morimoto’s Japanese Restaurant in New York has an entire wall created out of bottles. The result is a dazzling spectacle that has the potential to launch a restaurant. An alternative design is found at the Boa Steakhouse in Hollywood, where rows of bottles are lined along a clear wall.
Wine bottles go beyond just building blocks and have also become integral parts of a building’s thermal dynamics, providing a unit that’s not only appealing to the eye, but also meets our duty to our environment. But if you’re not a wine drinker, you can ask local pubs and restaurants for their bottles, who I’m sure will be more than happy to give you their rubbish to turn into your own treasures. The same ideas can also be achieved with beer, liquor, Pellegrino or other glass water bottles.
Wine Ideas brought to you by Air & Water, Inc. and written by Shireen Qudosi
Awesome article. I was at a upscale restaurant in Orange County, and they made this neat water fountain with wine bottles.
09/21/09 » 11:13 am »
Cool ideas, but if I walked into a restaurant and asked for their trash they’d probably think I was a crazy person…or homeless.
09/21/09 » 11:38 am »
I really like the idea of the water feeder and the chandelier. Awesome article!
10/01/09 » 7:37 pm »
Awesome idea and very creative to use wine bottle as building blocks. One question, how do you make the building blocks out of the wine bottles? I would love to make a wall in my game room.
12/06/09 » 4:21 pm »