99 (Broken) Bottles of Wine on the Wall

So, I love wine. I blame the French. I did a summer in Lyon after my first year of law school to study the law of the European Union and while I remember very little about the actual course, I got quite an education ... in wine. For those of you that don’t know, Lyon is in the Beaujolais region of France, a huge wine region. Wine was literally cheaper than water, and tasted amazing!

Miss Blogger sampling wine at a vineyard in Pays Lyon, Beaujolais region, circa 2006/ personal photo

Cut to now, and Mr. Waterfall and I share a mutual love of wine and we definitely enjoy a nice glass of red (or white, or rosé) with dinner most nights.

We settled on DIY submerged centerpieces a while ago, and trying to find cheap vases in the width and style that we were looking for proved beyond difficult. Then, I came across Mrs Pain au Chocolat’s posts about cutting wine bottles and a light went off in my head. Brilliant! It would be cheap because we were already drinking plenty of wine, AND we would be recycling!

Anyways… we happily started collecting bottles and I finally got around to buying a glass cutter. This is not the exact one, but close enough.

via HomeHardware.ca

I thought about buying a bottle cutter, but let's face it, I'm cheap, and the whole point of the project was to save money, not spend it. So, I figured my cheap 10$ glass cutting tool would do just fine for our purposes. So, back in december, while Mr. W was away on business, I figured I’d give it a whirl, because when the groom’s away, the bride will play (with sharp, stabby things, apparently).

The first issue I ran into was figuring out a way to get an even score line, so, I placed the bottle inside an ice bucket that came up to roughly where I wanted to cut, precariously holding the contraption between my thighs (probably mistake no.1) like so:

Then, I would hold the glass cutter against the bucket in one hand to keep it straight, while rotating the bottle with the other (all while attempting to take pictures).I understand now that this is much more easily accomplished as a two person team where one person holds the cutter and the other spins the bottle but I was trying to be a badass.

You can actually see the blade to the left here

Despite my questionable methods, I actually managed to get a very even score line. Here it is against the light.

Everything was going smoothly until it came to time to stress the glass. First I tried heating the bottle over a candle and rubbing an ice cube on it. FAIL.

I kept trying different combinations of heat and cold but my failure grew more colossal by the bottle!

Attempts 3-6, after that I stopped taking pictures.

Verdict: Kids, don't try this at home! Or, you know...do, but just beware that it's NOT as easy as it looks. In any case, this project was a no-go for The Waterfalls. I give mad props to Mrs Pain au Choc and all the other bees who successfully completed it, but I ran out of patience after about 10 shattered wine bottles. I'm counting my blessings as it is that I walked away without impaling myself!

Needless to say, my glass cutter went back to the hardware store...

Did any of you have an epic DIY failure? Did you give up or decide to give it another go?