Your bottle tree is wonderful and so is your fire pit. I have a round post I could use for a bottle tree. Great idea for the bird house on the top. I have some bottles collected too and they need to get used!!!. So doing this. yours looks so pretty.

How long were the screws you used to hold the bottles? I can see them now. Are they screws or long nails?

I believe they were 4" screws. We drilled guide holes with a drill then screwed them in 1/3 of the way. Everything is sprayed with water seal at the end. Birdhouse is glued to top of pole with E6000 glue. Thanks and I'd love to see yours when completed!!

Thank you threedogsmom. I am heading to town today and will see about getting some screws to use. I just moved a box of bottles in my garage on Saturday so it is just a matter of digging the post hole painting and putting in the screws. I might even do two. LOL I have a few posts with no plan in mind for them. NOW I have a plan. I am very excited about this!! Thank you for answering so soon.

OH wahhhh. I could not find screws or big nails long enough so bought some threaded rods I can cut to length and drill holes and put them in to hold the bottles. The weather is awful with wind and rain and pretty chilly. Not a day to be outside. Well any more. I already spent the day in town going from store to store. I am going to bring the bottles inside and maybe do some mosaic on them for my evening play time tonight. I did not find any bird houses either. will have to come up with some thing else. Or build a bird house.

Love your bottle tree idea treedogsmom! Love the colors and that little ladder to the hole. Cute touch. Looks like you might need help drinking a few bottles of wine at that great fire pit to fill up your tree!

I have a couple dozen blue bottles (a friend drinks Skye vodka) and I just can't bring myself to get rid of them! I've used some for garden edging, and 3 for "sculpture" (each on a long rod stuck in the ground). I'm getting ready to move, will have to find them a new home!

How sad you can not take them with you. I have had to move HUGE amounts of rust from house to house. Hubby would growl a little bit each time. finally I am at my forever house.

I was laying in bed last night and noticed my neighbors living room window looks directly into my bedroom window. Yes we had lived her for going on 9 years but the kitty kennel was always in front of the bedroom window blocking any views. Neighbors house is pretty far away. A few 100 feet. Even so if I look that way in the evening I can see them walking around in their house so same would be true the other direction. It is only one hole in my lilac bushes this view is possible. So for now I hope to be able to put that bottle tree right there. then I can continue to leave my bedroom curtains open. Reason I mostly want them open is the kitties go out their pet door and drag the curtains out with them as they go.

I am also working on building another tall kitty house so bottle tree might have to wait and still too cold to be painting. I can always paint it later. I am so excited about doing this. Digging the hole should not be too hard . I hope.

Oh friends... so last night we had a tremendous rain and thunder storm that dumped enough rain to wash the soil and grass seed down the slope and deposited all over the new patio in a one inch layer of pure mud and seeds. Sigh... Mother Nature, I didn't need that right now. So this evening we bought 100 sf of sod and placed it to stop erosion and will add a third row to the wall on one side. We also had a thrilling Friday night shop-vaccing the mud off the large flat stones and trying to clean the pea gravel. No fun. Will need to do multiple cleanings to satisfy hubby, who threatened to bulldoze the whole area and just make grass last nigh in his frustration. Luckily I was able to talk him out of that and we came upon a solution.

OHHH what a disaster. so glad you salvaged it. I was so tempted to just buy sod. HA one roll if that would have done it. but silly me bought seed and now have to keep doggie fenced out of the area until the grass is safe to walk on.

I just has my own little not so drastic disaster. Really no disaster except the bottle tree will not work where I wanted to put it. It is not tall enough and I can not afford to buy a 10 foot post. Tonight I will turn on my bedroom light and go out there and see how much is really visible. Half the bottom windows are covered with the cat walk.

I have another place it would look really nice but the bottles and rods would have to be removed for winter. Dang!! And some where in that area is the line from the house to the septic tank. I am going on a photo journey to see if I can figure it out from the photos I took while we were putting in the septic line to the tank. If I can go out from the house far enough then winter snow falling off the roof would not be a problem. It was so deep last winter I was standing at the lower edge of the roof pulling more snow off the roof. The roof edge was at my thighs. So many things were in my way and I kept falling through the snow onto things planters. GAH I moved all of that. Supposed to have three more winters like last. Of course because it was the first winter my hubby was gone. :'( He was probably up there laughing his butt off at me chasing the snow around.

Get some rest threedogsmom. You two have earned it. and pea gravel and mud. I would only think shoveling it into some sort of sifter and washing it.

Bottle tree is up as far as I can go for now. I need some thing for the top and maybe some more bottles. There is some mirror mosaic on a couple of them. I have to much else to do to take time to do more now. Maybe later. Just a little bit for here and there. Dang staging is not my forte. I forgot to move the shovels. LOL These bottle have been sitting in a box in the garage for years. Thank you for the push to get them out there in the yard where they belong.

What I ended up using to hold them onto the post is the heavy wires I cut off between the cattle panel fencing. I have lots of them as I fenced this whole place in the last few years. I saved those because I knew they would be useful. Never even thinking of a bottle. so I bought the threaded rods and can take two of them back or find some thing else to use them on.I can pull the rods out if I need to because of the deep snow. The totem has been in my yard for years left out all winter. It is getting kind of tired.

Shades, it looks great! Love the different types of blue bottles you have, too. So glad I could inspire you to use your collection in this way

Shades, great job on the bottle tree and I love your mosaicked totem too! I really love threedogsmom's birdhouse on top of hers but a fancy wooden finial would look good too. If you are feeling ambitious, you could mosaic a wood ball finial. They are maybe 4 to 6 inches in diameter so it wouldn't be a big project.

I guess wood expands and pops the mosaic right off of it. But maybe I can find some thing else to mosaic for the top. I do have an old oil can. Well no that would fill with water. I do not remember if it leaks or not. Will have to look into that or maybe give it a few drain holes. Will have to see how it fits the post top. Or maybe an upside down vase in the right shape. I do not think I have any blue ones left. Unless I mosaic one in blue..................... hummmm Thanks for the idea.

could mosaic that vase with those flat vase-filler marbles from the craft store--blue ones, of course! If you use exterior clear caulk, the light would shine through.

That would be pretty. I will see what I have around here I can use. I know I have green vases. Not sure about the blue. Maybe I can come up with a clear one or find one at a yard sale. I have been in purge mode for several years and glad of it. But times like this finding a simple glass vase can be hard.

I always wondered if you left one of the holes open on a bowling ball after mosaicking it if it could be stuck on a large screw (to go atop a post bottle tree) or on a length of rebar stuck into the ground. Maybe I'll have to mosaic a bowling ball this summer and find out.

Maybe a piece of conduit would fit the finger hole. I have heard after time the bowling balls split open if left in bad weather in the yard. I did pennies on one one time and they ll fall off and that was the end of bowling balls for me.

I only mosaicked one bowling ball (somewhere I have some old bowling balls I picked up at thrift stores and rummage sales ready to mosaic) and it was made at a crafting class. The woman had us use a tile adhesive/grout combination and we just pressed the stained glass piece into it. That stuff held up like steel. It is resistant to cracking, expanding, and shrinking. As far as I know it only comes in white. Here is the bowling ball I did:

The stand it is on was from one of those old halogen floor lamps that were all the rage in the late 1990s. That one had a tripod base with shelves. My husband reconfigured it so it was shorter (about 3 feet tall) with one shelf at the bottom. The part the bowling ball is on was where the bowl-like shade went for the lamp. The rust thing in the background is "Screech" a junk bird I bought at a craft store. Here he is in another picture where you can see him better:

Great idea to use an old lamp stand cut down. Mosaic is really pretty. I think your method was called push and squish so there was no need to grout. I have never tried it but have wanted to. Screech is darling!! I have a shovel bird I should put out. I was going to mosaic some day. I have had it for several years now and it is still not done.

I found SimpleFix adhesive/grout at Home Depot. It comes in quart pre-mixed containers for $9.47 (you could probably do a few bowling balls with that much) and it comes in white and "alabaster". It was nice to use because it dried quickly and the stained glass stayed put.

Here is Quackers my other "junk" bird. I wonder if he is similar to your shovel bird. (You can see another planter I had that year with impatiens and coleus.)

WOW I totally missed your comment and question here. I will get a photo of my shovel bird. It does not have a long neck. Rather short and squat. I love it though. LOVE your necklace on Quackers. And also the twisted metal on the legs, A lot of personality going on.

I am totally rained out now. It is a down pour out there and so clod and windy.

My friends dropped off my 3, 8 foot tall ,fence posts and even some more bottles in pretty colors. YIKES I never knew an 8 foot piece of wood could be so heavy. Going to get heavier too as they are still laying out there in the rain. OH well. I will see about digging the holes and moving them tomorrow depending on the weather. I will be adding three more bottle trees and I put out a three town request for empty wine bottles. I am sure these bottle trees will be an ongoing project for quite awhile and I will add to them as I hopefully keep getting bottles.

The_Kat thank you for the grout information. I will be looking for it . It does seem like it could certainly save a step.

I love the turquoise pole with blue bottles and flower! That birdhouse is the perfect top also!

Are you loving the firepit area too?

Lots of really cute mosaics and metal birds too! I finally got rid of most of my old saved and stockpiled tile because I just never got around to doing anything with it.