Upcycling Wine Bottles!

I normally take pretty frequent visits to the depot with my bottles, but they were really starting to build up, and good thing too, as I was over on my favorite site (Pinterest obviously) and was seeing so many wine bottle upcycles that I had to try one! I didn't really find a specific tutorial, I just kind of winged it (not saying there isn't one that did this exactly, I just didn't read this particular craft word for word, but meshed a few different ideas I saw!)

What you need:
- rinsed wine bottles with all the labels removed (I soak them in really hot water and they come right off, but you may need to really work off some remaining glue)
- glue gun and glue sticks
- spray paint of your choice (I tried brush painting them, and it didn't look nice, you can see the strokes and when you do a second coat, sometimes the paint comes off...)
- twine

What you do:
After your bottles are cleaned and the labels are removed, heat up your glue gun, and just glue on the bottle! You can do anything, I chose words this time to try it out, but you can do a pattern on it, or anything you want really!
Once that was dry (not long at all) I started to paint them with a brush. I didn't like the way this turned out, so I took them out on the deck and spray painted them. At this point they looked like this:

Then, I got the glue gun back out, and just wrapped twine around them very arbitrarily and glued it every now and again so it wouldn't move!

Result:

When I do it again:

I don't love these, but they are a good try at something I now know I can make really nice next time. Things I will do differently next time I make this:

1) All or none - make sure your wine bottles are all alike or all different. Two of these are the same, and one is different, and I think that looks off.

2) Make sure I plan what and how I will write. I love the read one, and I don't like my impulse "font" on the other two. I wish I had done it much nicer. I will plan it out on paper next time.

Finally, 3) I hate the twine. I will either skip it, use something else, or not make it so thick and bulky next time.

But, I think they are great, and they will make nice gifts once I perfect this new craft project!

Altering Curtains

Unfortunately I didn't take very many pictures of this craft... (Bad Blogger!) but I will write about it here anyway. A co-worker had bought some curtains for her house, one pair was too short and one pair was too long. She needed a piece put in to make the curtains longer, and she needed the other ones hemmed. I decided that if I was going to put a piece in one pair, I better put it in both, so that they all match.

It was very simple, and I picked a fabric that would make it even easier! A geometric pattern that gives you straight lines is definitely  the way to go!

What I did was randomly cut the curtains in two, then I sewed the fabric I purchased to the bottom of the curtain. This bit was very easy. The bit that was more tricky (but still pretty easy) was making the curtains the right length! I first measured from the bottom of the grommets to the end of the curtains the 84" they needed to be. This was wrong. Curtains hang from the TOP of grommets! Duh! So I had to readjust it. After I got one done, the only other hard part was making sure I put the extra panel in the same spot for the one it was going to hang next to. This just involved measuring and re-measuring several times before I sewed it up!

And the finished product was this:

I will try to get her to take a picture of them actually hanging in her house to add later!