Glass beer bottles most commonly come in three colors: clear, emerald green and brown. Once the beverage inside the bottle is gone, sending the bottles to the melting vat is not the only way to reuse the glass. You can also recycle beer bottles in practical and artistic ways to show off the colorful glass in an unexpected context.
Drinking Glasses
Cut the tapered neck off a beer bottle with a glass cutter and turn it into a functional drinking glass. Use a glass emery pad to polish the cut edge until it is smooth. At the Mack Glass Studio in Bloomington, Illinois, the artists make drinking glasses for guests at their art shows and studio parties by re-purposing beer bottles. They do not wash the dirty glasses; they just throw them into the kiln and make more "fresh" glasses as needed.
Recycled Rugs & Mats Unique Rugs & All Weather Mats Made From Natural, Recycled Materials. www.gaiam.com/Recycled_Rugs
Chandeliers
Make an interesting hanging chandelier with beer bottles. Leave the labels on or remove them to suit your tastes. Use heavy but bendable wire to form collars around the neck and middle of the bottles. Leave a long tail on the wire. Turn the bottles upside down and wire the tails into a suitable suspension device or frame. Install a functioning light bulb in the center of the beer bottle "crystals."
Table Legs
Stack beer bottles into a suitable shape as a support for a tabletop. Glue the bottles together, from side to side and top to bottom, using a glass adhesive. You can form any shape you want to create, including a center pillar support or individual beer-bottle "legs" for the table. Top these beer-bottle supports with a sheet of tempered glass or a wooden top.
Garden Walls
Line up empty beer bottles on their sides in a line the length of the garden wall, on top of a thin bed of quick-setting concrete. Let this first line dry or "set." When the concrete is set, begin building a wall of beer bottles. Point all the bottoms in the same direction. "Butter" and set each bottle so that a layer of concrete separates the bottle from the bottle beneath it and the bottles to either side. Build the wall up slowly, over a matter of days or weeks, to maintain stability until the wall is completed.
Christmas Tree
Purchase a number of tempered glass sheets cut into circles. You can often find these round glass sheets at craft stores and furniture stores. Create a stack of green beer bottles in a round shape, standing up, on the floor. Place the largest round glass sheet on top of these bottles. Stack a second level of bottles, slightly smaller in diameter, and top this stack with a smaller glass round. Stack another level, still smaller in diameter, and top it with a glass round. Continue until you have created a cone shape. Top the tree with a final, single bottle and insert a decoration in the bottle opening to serve as a "star" topper.
Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/147884-things-to-make-from-recycled-beer-bottles/#ixzz1NDB0QK6Z
