Making bottle candles and wind chimes

My mother knows I love stain glass crafts and recently a lady she knows opened her own stain glass shop in the town where my mother lives.  She was holding a class of bottle cutting so we signed up and learned how to cut open bottles and make two unique crafts!

We brought in two of our own bottles each and used a special tool to cut the bottom off each bottle

The little cutter on the top is what cuts the glass

by turning the tool around the bottle it scores the glass

can you see the tiny score line...

Next we added the bottle to some hot water to expand the glass for about 15-20 seconds

Then quickly we added some cold water to the score line to contract the glass and if  you are lucky the glass bottom will popped right off...if not you need to do the process all over again

until you have success!!

using a grinder we smoothed off the two pieces so as to not have any sharp edges

we used a drill press with a diamond bit to make a hole into the bottom of the glass bottom piece

We decided our first bottle would be a hanging votive candle holder, so we took copper wire and bent it to fit around a candle 

like this

making sure it was balanced and hang straight and secure in the copper wire

next we added chain and rings to support the candle inside the bottle

like this

when you lift the bottle up you expose the candle and can light it

You can decide as we did to add the bottom piece of the bottle to the candle holder...see background green bottle...Next we decided to make a wind chime glass bottle we took a wooden ball that had hole on both ends that we could stick a copper wire into

we bent the ends of the copper wire into circles

again using chain and large rings we strung up the bottle

added the bottle glass piece as a weight, when the wooden ball hits the glass it chimes

My mother and I enjoying our creations

I miss doing crafty things with my mother, we always have so much fun crafting together and now I am itchy to get a bottle cutter tool to add to my stain glass workshop one day!