Wine Bottle Lamp

This weekend Jared and I completed a project combining a couple of our new hobbies. I recently experimented with some glass etching, and Jared has been tinkering with LEDs and electronics for the past year.

Our first joint project was a wine bottle lamp.

Not bad for a first attempt. I should admit that Jared did most of the work. First I made the stencils of hearts and spirals, which are hard to see in the photos, and then etched the glass with a cream. Jared drilled a hole near the bottom of the bottle for the cord and we played with different configurations of LEDs for a bit.

Once we decided on the number, color and intensity of LEDs, Jared soldered them. (I did one of the connections myself!)

The lamp connects to any outlet using a wall/USB adapter, one end of which is soldered to the LEDs that we lowered into the bottle on a string. We hot-glued and then super-glued the cord into the hole at the base of the lamp to stabilize the LED strand inside. Then we popped the cork back in to hold the thread with the LEDs exactly in position.

It looks like this when it's not plugged in.

When it is plugged in, it looks like this.

If you want to make a wine bottle lamp, but don't have an electronics expert living with you, buy a kit like this one for around $15. I'm looking forward to making more of these!