With the holidays right around the corner, I’m sure many of you are looking creative use for all those empty wine bottles! Not that I’m implying that you have too many wine bottles or anything, but who doesn’t love to recycle! Especially when you end up with something pretty in the end. I posted some wine bottle vases a while back that continue to be one of the most popular posts on the site, so clearly there’s a demand there.

Also, I’ve recently developed a bit of an obsession with mercury glass. Especially the vintage looking speckled kind. And turns out you can totally recreate this look yourself using Krylon Looking Glass. I’ve been seeing lots of awesome DIY projects using this stuff (some of my favorites here and here!) so I was dying to get my hands on a can.

You can spray just about anything with this stuff and end up with a cool looking mirrored finish. But as I mentioned, I’m partial to the speckled looking vintage variety. After looking around a bit, I settled on this method to try to achieve it.

Other than the wine bottles and spray paint, all you need is a spray bottle filled with equal parts water and vinegar, plus some paper towels or an old rag.

First, you want to remove the foil/labels from your wine bottles. Removing the labels is a breeze thanks to this amazing find! But removing the foil around the top was such a pain! It took 10 minutes of jabbing at it with a combination of a blade, tin snippers, and a seam ripper to get this stuff off. Anyone else struggle with this or have some pointers to help me out?

That was easily the hardest part of this project. After that, you just mist the bottles lightly with the water/vinegar mixture and spray a light coat of paint. Let it dry for a minute or two and then use the paper towels/rag to dab away the bubbles formed by the water/vinegar. I tried to smudge them lightly to blend into the bottle. I smudged a little too hard on my first coat, so I ended up repeating this process a second time.

I let them dry for about an hour before sticking some flowers in to take pictures.  I was curious to see if the different colored bottles would make a huge difference in the finished product but I guess not.

I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with this technique. It’s exactly what I was looking for! Just think how awesome this would look on something with a more textured surface!

Not like there’s any shortage of vases in this house, but I could always use more! Especially when they’re basically free.

And you don’t even need to limit yourself to wine bottles! I think this would look adorable on those vintage looking Coke bottles, or any other glass container with an appealing shape. I would love to hear what  you think!

Also sharing here and here!

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