5 Ways to Repurpose Old Bottles

We have no shortage of old bottles in the shop. In fact, we have a surplus. One of the ways we plan on getting them off the shelf is by telling you what in the heck to do with these gorgeous, frosty, colorful old relics from days gone by, when everything from milk to medicine came in a glass bottle. 

Here are five of our favorite ways to reuse an old glass bottle. Oh, and here's a blog post about how to clean old bottles--good info! 

1.     Create a display on a mantel or table as centerpiece. Not be Captain Obvious here, but we're big fans of displaying these as is, grouping anywhere from three to a gazillion bottles together to dress up your mantel or create a cool centerpiece on your dining room or console table. 

2.     Use as vases for single buds. Or greenery. Or sprigs of holiday cheer. Instead of bunching all your flowers together and stuffing them into one vase, separate them, so they each have a bottle of their own. These kind of arrangements can be equally striking with simple greenery, airplants, or some holiday-berry branches, real or fake. 

3.     Spruce up wedding décor. The vintage wedding theme is in! And the easiest way to achieve the desired look and feel is to turn to your table centerpieces. Clustering some old glass bottles together, especially if they coordinate with your color scheme, will serve several purposes: They'll help you achieve that vintage look, hold your flowers, and reflect light from any candles you might be using. 

4.     Display under a cloche or inside a cabinet. We found several photos on Pinterest of bottles grouped under a roomy cloche. And since we love cloches almost as much as we love antique bottles, we were sold instantly. They also look beautiful inside a small cabinet, where they can take center stage. 

5.     Display photos. This might be the trickiest of our suggestions, as you have to locate a bottle big enough and clear enough to really show off a photo, but we think this is a novel way to display old-timey photographs or postcards. 

Bonus Ideas: Create a colorful chandelier or transform into oil lamps. 

What did we miss? Let us know if you have other ideas for reusing old bottles. 

Do you love to repurpose junk? See our other "repurpose" posts: 5 Ways to Repurpose a Baluster and 5 Ways to Repurpose a Corbel. Now that we have three posts, we think it's safe to say we have a series! Tell us in the comments if you want help reimagining any other specific old odds and ends.