Christmas Prep: Light bottles

Ahem, there are some empty gin bottles in the house.

Well, that’s not quite true. There are lots of half-full and some almost-full gin bottles in the house, much of it homemade. But there are also quite a few empty bottles, mostly from my Craft Gin Club subscription that delivers a treat package every three months. Some also from car boots when I’ve picked up something pretty. And one or two that I’ve seen on offer in the supermarket and been unable to resist.

And well, they’ve essentially been gathering dust for quite a while.

So I decided to make something out of them.

(Note: other spirits are available, but I think gin comes in the nicest bottles.)

Light bottles

This is just about the simplest “make” I can imagine.

1. Take one nice looking empty gin bottle.
   If you don’t have one, buy some gin, drink it, and then you’ll have the empty bottle you need. Just don’t drink it all at once. That’s why I’m posting this in mid-November; to give you the chance to empty a new bottle before Christmas if you want to make one yourself.
2. Get some little LED lights, a string of 20-30 is about enough.
   They usually come with a little battery pack attached. I got four sets for £1 at a car boot and then got some more on offer in B&M. Cheap and cheerful is how we like it, right?!
3. Put some batteries in the lights and make sure they work.
   Good to do this before you put them in the bottle in case they fail but get tangled and they’re hard to get back out again. That would be annoying.
4. Push the lights in the gin bottle.
5. Decide what to do with the battery pack.
   I’ve just left mine hanging for now. I might glue them underneath and use a bit of colourful card to make a skirt to hide them. Or I might glue them on the back. Not sure.

There that’s it!

Couldn’t be simpler.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them. Maybe I’ll just decorate the windows with them in December. Maybe they’ll make gifts (I think I need to do a better job of hiding the battery packs for that).

Either way, I’m pretty pleased with my meagre efforts.

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Have you got and simple but effective ways of reusing stuff? Do share, I’d love to hear!