Wine Bottle to Bird Feeder Upcycle

I found this project at The Garden Roof Coop.

I don’t even drink wine, but I do feed birds and have relatives that drink plenty of wine so I figured this was a good one to try. Plus I love colored glass. A trip to me mom’s to acquire a wine bottle (green one woot!) and off I go!

First I drilled hole in wine bottle with diamond bit (we used 1/2″). It takes a little bit of time and you have to keep it cool by misting with water. You are also not supposed to push it through the glass but we found you kind of have to. Just wear your safety glasses, OK?

Drill one hole on each side, or more I suppose but this was enough for me. Frankly this process scared the #$@% out of me and I expected the bottle to shatter at any minute but it was fine (probably because my husband actually did it while I misted the bottle with the hose).

Next we stuck the  bottle to a clay saucer (you could use a pretty china or ceramic saucer but we couldn’t find one) with epoxy. We had this left over from another project. Those aren’t cracks on the saucer, they are dribbles of epoxy (oops!)

close up-filled the bottle with thistle seed and replaced cork….you could use bigger seed if you made a bigger hole.

Wrapped copper wire recycled from old, unusable home wiring and coated it with more epoxy. Make sure you do not epoxy the cork on!

Twisted the top of the wire around to make a hanging loop.

Finished product waiting for the birds to come find it!

Update: It has held up great so far and nothing has fallen off BUT the saucer tends to fill up with water when it rains and two weeks later and no birds have used this feeder Not sure if it’s a win or a fail?

Further update: the birds never did use it, water got in and ruined the seed and eventually the saucer fell off. Definitely a fail!