Soda Bottle Bud Vases

Soda tastes better out of an ice-cold glass bottle than out of a can or poured into a glass. Who's with me?

We drink very little soda, so I rarely buy glass bottles, but I gave Mr. Wonderful an Opening Day party (baseball season) on Monday and I bought some soda in glass bottles to go with the Cracker Jacks and the peanuts in the shell. The bottles were too nifty to throw away, so I had to think of a use for them. Bud vases, of course! They just needed a little fancy-ing up.

If you click on the "crafts" label here, you'll see that the only crafts I do are easy ones. And this one is no exception. All you need: bottles, ribbon, embellishments, your trusty hot glue gun, and a kitty.

To be fair, I was making these last night and she was at the end of a long, hard day of napping and eating. It wears her out, you know. These are 8 oz. bottles and a length of ribbon about 8" long will go around the bottle with a little overlap. Hot glue it, hot glue your embellishment to the front and BOOM! Cute bud vase!

TIP: See the "sell by" date printed on the bottle on the right? That wipes off easily with a little nail polish remover on a cotton ball.

You can use any type of ribbon and any type of embellishment you can think of to make these suit any season or holiday or occasion. I chose a linen-like 1 1/2" wide ribbon, which I think works really well. I'm not into the burlap craze (???) but it would work well, too, and would give you a very rustic, country look. These paper and fabric flowers are from the scrapbooking section of Hobby Lobby. I got the ribbon there, as well.

Now here's an important TIP: When you glue the ribbon around the bottle and when you glue the embellishment onto the front of the ribbon, move the ribbon slightly on the bottle so the glue doesn't bond to the bottle. This serves two purposes:
1) the ribbon can be removed and the bottle can be popped into the dishwasher
2) if you want to change these for seasons or holidays, you just remove the ribbon and make a new one... you don't have to have a vast collection of bottles!

I made a less girly one for Mr. Wonderful's desk, because who doesn't like a fresh flower? This is just a chipboard letter glued to the ribbon. 

I'm pretty happy with how these turned out. Tiger Lily is not quite as impressed.