Recycled Bottle Jewelry Dishes

Last week, I showed you guys my cool new tool, the Kinkajou bottle cutter, and how to cut bottles to make beeswax candles.  Well, of course, now I can’t throw any bottles away (haha) and I have a couple more projects to show you that you can use your old bottles to make.  Today’s project is pretty simple: you can add a bit of liquid gold leaf to a cut bottle to make a pretty jewelry dish.  If you’re not into jewelry, you can easily adapt this idea to desk organization or small part craft storage.

I made two versions, one with a painted inside, and one with a painted outside.  Both have a bit of a vintage feel to them, which you could certainly enhance by starting with vintage bottles.  These were just made from glass water bottles.

I’m not going to go through the cutting process here, because there are different methods out there.  I will say, I’ve already cut dozens of bottles with my Kinkajou, so if you’re into recycled crafts, it’s probably a good investment for you, because it’s really quite reliable as far as getting a good clean cut line.  I shared how it works last week, so feel free to take a look at that post, or check it out on the Bottle Cutting Inc. site.

So I will skip ahead to turning it into something functional!  I cut these bottles really short to use just the very bottoms.  I used some liquid gold leaf to embellish them.  Be sure to sand the cut edge really well so that it’s smooth and won’t cut you; it only takes a minute to make the edge safe.

I poured a little liquid leaf into the inside, and turned turned it to coat the inside.  I also used a small piece of paper towel to smooth a bit of gold onto the outer grooves (I just wiped away quickly if I got too much).  I returned the rest of the leaf to the bottle.  I let it dry overnight – so simple!

It looked cool on the outside, but most often, you see the inside of these sorts of dishes.  So I decided my second attempt would be painted on the outside.  I also cut it much shorter.  I actually love how different the two of these are, and the gold ties them together.  This is 2 coats of liquid leaf.  Just let it dry for a minute or so in between.

And, after they dried overnight, I had fun bedside accessories!  What do you think??