How To Make Bottle Lights
Having had bins full of glass bottles over the years from drinking, I thought that there must be something I could do with these! So I decided to try and create a bottle light from a used bottle using LED lights.
So after cleaning the bottle I had to drill a hole in the bottle.
This was accomplished by using a 10mm diamond cutter drill bit and holding the bottle tight on a vice with plastic jaws so the writing doesn't get damaged.
This was more difficult than anticipated as the glass was different thicknesses and was prone to crack.
But after several attempts I managed to get a decent hole with no cracks and then used a white grommet with a 9mm internal diameter to encompass the rough edges of the hole.
Now I was able to feed the LED lights through the hole trying to get a balanced distribution of the lights in the bottle - which was achieved by pulling the end out of the neck of the bottle and jiggling around until I was happy with the look.
The end was then pushed back into the bottle and a red cap was used to seal the bottle.
The final stage was to push the end of the battery compartment into the grommet and seal with superglue.
The LED lights are powered by CR2032 batteries and as the bulbs are LED the life of the light is around 10,000 hours.
The final design looks really cool and is easily switched on and off using the rotary battery compartment that is attached to the rear of the bottle.
The bottle lights can be used indoors in any room to create unusual ambience or outdoors on a summer night when you are having a barbeque or party, either way they look great and family & friends will be envious! The bottle lights encourage recycling and using LED lights are eco friendly as well, helping reduce landfill.
I have now used many different recycled bottles and enjoy designing these bottle lights - using different coloured lights has achieved many different results from only 20 minutes work on each item.
I plan to try creating bigger bottle lights from wine, whisky & spirit bottles in the future.
I have other ideas on improving the design, like frosting the inside of wine bottles, using colour rotating lights, and finding some suitable plug in options for bigger bottles that wouldn't necessarily be moved.
So after cleaning the bottle I had to drill a hole in the bottle.
This was accomplished by using a 10mm diamond cutter drill bit and holding the bottle tight on a vice with plastic jaws so the writing doesn't get damaged.
This was more difficult than anticipated as the glass was different thicknesses and was prone to crack.
But after several attempts I managed to get a decent hole with no cracks and then used a white grommet with a 9mm internal diameter to encompass the rough edges of the hole.
Now I was able to feed the LED lights through the hole trying to get a balanced distribution of the lights in the bottle - which was achieved by pulling the end out of the neck of the bottle and jiggling around until I was happy with the look.
The end was then pushed back into the bottle and a red cap was used to seal the bottle.
The final stage was to push the end of the battery compartment into the grommet and seal with superglue.
The LED lights are powered by CR2032 batteries and as the bulbs are LED the life of the light is around 10,000 hours.
The final design looks really cool and is easily switched on and off using the rotary battery compartment that is attached to the rear of the bottle.
The bottle lights can be used indoors in any room to create unusual ambience or outdoors on a summer night when you are having a barbeque or party, either way they look great and family & friends will be envious! The bottle lights encourage recycling and using LED lights are eco friendly as well, helping reduce landfill.
I have now used many different recycled bottles and enjoy designing these bottle lights - using different coloured lights has achieved many different results from only 20 minutes work on each item.
I plan to try creating bigger bottle lights from wine, whisky & spirit bottles in the future.
I have other ideas on improving the design, like frosting the inside of wine bottles, using colour rotating lights, and finding some suitable plug in options for bigger bottles that wouldn't necessarily be moved.