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Beer Bottle Craft
Check out this beer bottle craft! Oh Boy. this was a fun craft project! How you you like to be able to cut a glass bottle with a piece of yarn?! Check this out! Now I’ve had some emails of readers being to scared to try this and I KNOW exactly what you mean. I had a few friends over to help me when I did it too.
I just recently learned about the Generation Green (g2) Bottle Cutter
(seen on Amazon) that will cut bottles easily with no hassle! (Thanks pilarw for telling me about this amazing tool!!!)
How would you like to repurpose a beer bottle into a pencil holder, vase or even a drinking glass?! You can! It’s not that difficult either. I would say on a 1 to 10 difficulty chart with 10 being the hardest, I would give it a 5. I only give it a 5 because each piece of glass I’ve tried this on gives different results.
Here’s what you will need:
- empty and clean beer bottle
- yarn
- lighter
- acetone (I used nail polish remover with acetone in it)
- sink filled with cold ice water
- safety googles
- gloves
- Fire Extinguisher (I didn’t have this but I did keep baking soda near by just in case)
Instructions for this beer bottle craft project:
First, I braided a piece of yarn to the dimensions of the beer bottle and soaked it in the nail polish remover solution. I tied the braided string around the neck of the beer bottle and cut of the excess string. I then removed the string from the bottle and soaked it in the nail polish remover.
Next, while the string was soaking, I filled the sink with cold water and added ice to it.
Then I put my gloves and safety googles on and put the soaked string onto the empty and clean beer bottle. Tip: Make sure the string is exactly where you want the cut to happen.
I turned the bottle on it’s side and then lit the acetone soaked string and began to turn the bottle slowly as the fire heat the bottle. I counted to 45 seconds or until the acetone burned off and immediately dunked the bottle in the cold water. Immediately when you immerse the burning bottle into the water, you will hear a pop! This scared the crap out of me when I first did it! The bottle top pretty much pops off once the heated bottle hits the cold water. It’s pretty darn cool!!!
I ended up with a really clean cut on my bottle but I’m certain this will not be the case with everyone. If you plan to use this as a drinking glass, I would highly suggest you do some wet sanding around the edges before use. The dremel tool with a glass cutting bit would be ideal but the wet sanding would work just fine too.
Note: I have tried this many different times with many different bottles and this is not so easy with thicker bottles (like wine bottles). If at first you don’t succeed, don’t give up! Try again! I did find I was really nervous my first three tries and I didn’t heat the bottle long enough. I counted to 45 seconds so fast that it was probably only 20 seconds and that’s the reason for my first couple of failed attempts.
There’s another way to break a glass bottle. It’s a term called “cracking off” and it’s been used for centuries. It’s basically the same method of heating the bottle causing it to crack but it may be a bit easier to achieve with the right tools. In the video below they use a diamond tool and a small torch (just like this one) with a turn table (or lazy susan).
I hope you enjoy this tutorial!
Stay Crafty my Friends!
This is so awesome you know I will have to give it a shot! You crack me up describing your experience! Thank you for sharing
Congratulations on the new site!! I love the concept ;D
Too funny that this is your first post, I have 3 empty beer bottles sitting next to my kitchen sink taunting me.
My husband just grimaced then gave a guffaw when I said I was thinking of trying this process on them for drinking glasses the other day. Then he said “can’t we just have regular glasses?” {note: our cabinet is currently full with mason jars as drink-wear}
I’m looking forward to following your journey into a new kind of Repo-Woman!
{{hugs}}
Thanks for your support April!
Nail polish remover didn’t work for me- ended up just using gasoline!
OMG! Are you serious?! Whoa! Be careful! I’m not sure I would have attempted that but glad it worked for you. It did take a few times with the nail polish remover but it does work.