Project Wedding: Message Bottles

My little brother is getting married in July and I have been given (or volunteered) the task of decorating for the wedding.  I've been preparing a lot of things for the event and decided to share what I've been up to (since it's taken most of my time and kept me from my normal blog projects.

Here's a little background on what's happening.  My brother would have really loved to have had the wedding on a beach in Florida.  While that sounds great, it wasn't so realistic if they wanted many of their friends and family to attend.  We were able to find a venue that has a year-round tent for functions.  We've decided to do the ceremony and reception dinner theater style.  This saves us on paying for a seperate spot set up with chairs for the ceremony and then a space set for the reception.  The guests will arrive, find their places at the tables and watch the ceremony from there.  The buffet reception will begin directly following.

The centerpieces for the wedding have many parts.  I'll eventually share all of the parts one at a time and show them put together when it's all done.  For starters I decided to place a bottle on the table with paper and pencils so that guests could leave the happy couple "messages in a bottle."  Here's my bottle project.

Materials
Wine bottles
Razor blade
Goo Gone

Scotch tape
Hemp (or jute) rope
Scissors

Instructions

• Soak bottles in a sink (or large container) to loosen the label.

• After soaking I removed the labels with a razor blade.  Be very careful while using a blade, especially on a slick, wet surface.

• Many of the labels left a residue from the adhesive.  I set the bottles out to dry before tackling the removal of the glue.

• Attack the glue residue with some Goo Gone.  I simply sprayed the area with Goo Gone and then rubbed away the adhesive with a paper towel.  This makes the bottle greasy and requires that you wash it.  I dunked it into the sink and gave them a quick wash over and then set them out again to dry (I do not have pics of this step)

Then I went one step further...

• I decided that the bottle was too plain all by itself so I wrapped some hemp cord around the top to give it a little more rustic/beachy look.
• I taped my cord to the neck of the bottle.  I left a small tail of cord hanging at the bottom in order to tie the ends.  I used two pieces of tape, one at the top and the bottom of the area of where I wanted to cord to cover.

• Next I started wrapping the cord around the neck, starting at the top and working my way down.  Be sure to push the cord tight up against the other layers as you round the neck.

• When you get to the bottom of your taped area, tie the two ends of the cord together and knot them.  Trim away the excess and your bottle is ready.