I’ve been working on my own personal Pinterest challenge since last week, albeit very slowly. My goal was to do something with the stash of wine bottles that use to live atop our kitchen cabinets but currently have a home under our piano.
First task was to clean and peel the labels off of the bottles. I found a tip on Pinterest that if you heat your oven to 175 degrees and “bake” the bottle for 7-10 minutes the glue should melt and the label should peel off easily. So I tried it.
It worked very well for some, not at all for others. At first I thought I had found a correlation between price and peel-ability, not so. Then I thought it had to do whether or not the label had a shiny laminated coating, nope. Or maybe it’s the thicker labels that peel off more easily, or not. Yeah, I have no clue why some labels peeled better than others. Even with the bottles with easy to peel labels, I was still left with a sticky haze of glue on the bottles. Enter Goo-Gone!
This stuff is amazing! With a dry rag and Goo Gone you can easily remove any adhesive residue from surfaces. It worked really well on the glass wine bottles. I was left with clean, shiny wine bottles, now what to do with them?
Using Pinterest for inspiration I decided to try making soap dispensers for our kitchen, one for hand soap and one for dish soap. The two bottles that I selected are similar heights, but vary in their shape. They also both have the screw top which will be nice for adding the pump dispenser.
After selecting the two bottles I picked out two shades of blue-green spray paint. I had one left-over bottle and found the other lighter shade at Walmart. For our accent colors in the kitchen I have decided to go with varying shades of blue-green (teal, aqua, turquoise, mint, what have you). The layering of similar colors really appeals to me rather than being too matchy-matchy. I feel like it gives it a more “collected” look rather than an “I just went to Target and bought all matching accessories” look (which I kind of did originally with the teal, ooops!)
I applied three light coats of paint to each bottle, allowing them to dry an hour in between each coat.
After 2 coats
And here they are after three coats of paint and a night of drying.
You’ll notice that I’m still missing an essential feature, the soap pumps. I believe that my current shampoo and conditioner bottle pumps might do the trick, but I think I’ll wait until their empty before I steal them for this purpose. I also want to add another detail to the bottles, but that will have to wait for another post!
While I began the wine bottle project I also added another Pinterest project. Last week I was inspired by this post on Pinterest.
Our current wooden spoon situation in our kitchen is rather sad, so I figured cheap and cute wooden utensils were in order! Saturday morning, while out in search of aqua spray paint, I decided to pick up a few other blue-green hues for my kitchen utensil project.
At Home Depot I found four bottles of clearance Martha Stewart sample paint in “Araucana Teal” ($0.50 each!) so I quickly grabbed those. I also found teal Rustoleum spray paint at Home Depot that I couldn’t pass up. I stopped by Walmart scored a few bottles of sample paint in shades of mint-green, as well as aqua “Blue Ocean Breeze” Krylon spray paint. While browsing the clearance section of Walmart I spotted a set of two heavy-duty wooden spoons on clearance for $7, along with a set of five bamboo utensils for $5 (regular price).
While I had my paint clothes on I decided to tackle the two projects at once. After I had sprayed the first coat on the wine bottles I started lightly sanding the handles of the utensils, and cleaned them with a damp cloth after. I then used painters tape to tape off the section I wanted to paint.
To protect the tops I wrapped each with a plastic sandwich bag and sealed it with more tape. Then I applied my first coat, one color for each utensil. Some were spray painted, others brushed. Some had matte finish, others glossy. I like the variation.
I did three light coats of paint and allowed them to cure overnight. Here is the final (well, almost) product!
I still have to spray the painted utensils using a non-toxic shellac, but due to recent rainy days I’ll have to wait to officially finish these two projects.
Oh, and while I’m at it here’s one last project for good measure! Winston’s doggy wipe container before and after (English bulldogs are notoriously messy, drooly, and gross).
I covered the lid about a month before with a fabric scrap and Modge Podge but I thought the bottom needed a little spicing up!
Before
After
And there you have it! A weekend of kitchen accessory painting projects inspired by Pinterest. I’ll post an update once I have some soap-pump action in here!
Oh, and yes I realize that I have used only two of thirty-plus wine bottles, but at least that's a start, right?
