I recently saw some bottles online that had net on them, and really liked the look.  I decided to try to make my own.

My husband and I have old bottles that we’ve bought at thrift shops, and I always thought it might be fun to do something with them.

For this project I used twine, my glue gun, and Mod Podge.

 

 

 

 

For my first attempt, I decided to use a green bottle we had (which has a concave bottom), a problem I realized only later that I would have to solve.

I started by creating a little ring of twine to go around the neck (I glued the ends together with the glue gun, overlapping the ends).  After dropping it over the top of the bottle, I took 6 long lengths of the twine, folded them in half and tied them at that middle point to the ring of twine on the bottle.  I spaced them out and then used blue painter’s tape on the ring of twine to keep everything from sliding around while I worked.

I then took one string of the twine from one knot and tied it to a string from the next knot, trying to make even triangles all the way around for the first row.  For the rest of the rows, I made diamond shapes with the knots.

 

 

 

When I got to the bottom, this is how it looked.  It tends to slide up, so you need to pull  it down from time to time to figure out which row of knots will be the last one.

I had to figure out what to do with all those loose ends.  First of all, I turned my bottle upside down and put it in a Coca Cola glass.  I probably should have used something sturdier, but it was just the right size and shape, and worked fine.

 

Using my glue gun, I glued each set of strings to the bottom edge of the bottle, making sure the bottom knots were all pulled down to the bottom edge of the bottle. I crossed the strings across the bottom of the bottle and glued them to the opposite edge as well, because the bottom is concave.  Then I snipped off the excess twine.

 

I realized that I couldn’t leave the bottom looking like this (and the bottle was wobbly when I tried to set it on the counter), so I decided to take the twine and coil it so that it looked like a drink coaster to make a finished bottom (and I hoped that it would help with the steadiness problem too).

As I coiled the twine, I hot glued it to the strings criss-crossing the bottom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I got to the edge, I simply cut the twine and glued the end of it down.  I liked how it looked now.

 

When I turned the bottle upright, it was steady.  Hurray!

 

 

 

Hmm…the top edge of the netting looked unfinished, so I decided to wrap the neck part-way up with some more twine.

I started wrapping and hot gluing twine to the neck. I had problems.  I couldn’t seem to wrap it tightly enough or fast enough so that that hot glue wasn’t visible, and I was burning my fingers on the hot glue as I tried.  The shape and slipperiness of the neck made this difficult.

I ended up coating the twine with Mod Podge, and then wrapped the neck of the bottle.   It was a messy, but way easier. The twine adhered to the bottle well, cleaned up easily and created a nice finish to the twine when it dried (it’s still a little opaque in the photo–I couldn’t wait to take a picture of it).

I love the look! The bottles in the first picture are ones I made after I got done with this one (they were easier, because their bottoms are flat).  We live near the beach, and I think these netted bottles look nautical.  I want to make more.  Now I’m on the hunt for more old bottles…