Upcycling Glass

Spiffing it up

• Sharpies will write on metal or glass and the color will stick around for years.

Scratched-up glass cups

• Fill 'er up as catch-all containers in just about any room. When they get dirty clean them and put them back.

Essential oil bottles

• Rinse them out with vodka and let them dry. Fill them with essential oil blends mixed with carrier oil. General rule is at least 9 parts carrier oil (neutral stuff like sunflower, safflower, etc.) to 1 part essential oil blend, and use with extreme caution only. Essential oils are dangerous!

Wine Bottles

• Can be reused for homemade foodstuffs and drinkables. Anything alcoholic obviously, if you have new corks and a corker. Also can be fitted with pour tops (they should have caps too or the stuff within can go bad fast) and filled with stuff like flavored olive oil, vinegar, or syrup

Marbles

• Not all of these are safe or free of contaminants. I wouldn't suggest putting them near any water or food source.
• Fill old glass jars with lids with a bunch of these. Put them in windows. If you like, add a bunch of Everclear, rubbing alcohol, or some really high proof vodka, and the food coloring of your choice.
• Really nice accents for adobe, cement, or tile walls. Also for mosaic work.

Herb and spices glass containers

• Wash and dry them. Then...
• Stash them in a safe place, ready to be filled up with any number of trinkets and small items that would otherwise be stored loose
• Good for things like barrettes, hair ties, stickers, bobby pins... in fact everything you could also store in an old pill container (see Upcycling Plastic). Important distinction: not as portable and can break. Another thing you should know is that if the things in there are made of metal, add a coffee filter-and-rubber-band lid or a sock-and-rubber-band lid (or, spare sock and hair tie lid, or a napkin-and-string lid, you get the idea) for the contents to breathe or they'll rust quick. You could also line the top with a coffee filter, put the lid back on and just leave it open as if you were shaking spices out
• Re-use them as storage for more herbs and spices, such as those you get in plastic bags which would otherwise go stale quicker thanks to well, being stored in plastic
• Mix up your own seasoning blends. Store them in these.
• If you don't have a salt and pepper shaker in the house but have two of these, with those little shaker top things or something similar, and they just ran out of their goodies, you can get the salt and pepper in bulk and decant. These can then sit on the table as salt and pepper shakers. This is particularly relevant if the thing you just ran out of was peppercorns in a peppercorn grinder. That's a free peppercorn grinder.
• Make small batches of extracts in them - one for brandy with vanilla bean, one for brandy with orange zest, etc. to make your own extracts. Or, use a funnel to pour strained extract from a larger batch made in a mason jar into these.
• If you work from home or otherwise meal prep and leave it in a home fridge, or are willing to take the risk of carrying glassware around, these are great for adding portion-sized amounts of dressings, condiments, sauces, syrups, garnishes, additions, and so on to individual prepared meals. They will, however, leak if you tip them. This is really helpful when trying to make bentos you plan to eat at home or carefully transport.
• No pincushion for hand sewing? Cram an old small sock or T-shirt rag into one of these and push needles and such into that. Close the lid, keep that in a drawer or shoebox or something, and you won't need to worry as much about needles going everywhere and stabbing people without provocation.
• Speaking of sewing, those sewing kits you find usually break. The thread included in those things also usually breaks. You can assemble your own in one of these, keep it in a closet, and have it ready for a rainy day. You will need one needle stuck into and through a piece of cardstock so you can find it easily, one thimble preferably metal (optional, I don't actually use these), one button, one safety pin (or more), one small spool of 100% nylon black thread, and one small spool of 100% nylon white thread. If you want more, get a spool of beige thread. Should be enough to get you through a variety of fashion mishaps.
• Perfect for crafters that make stuff using small items, especially people who craft with things like seed beads, embroidery floss, etc. Sort that stuff by color and/or type.
• Store seeds in these for next year. Add a couple of silica desiccant packets and/or a few spoonfuls of salt, baking soda, chalk. I usually just have salt around so I use that. Put the seeds in new small envelopes, like coin envelopes, if you got their original envelope dirty while planting (oops), or use the original envelope they came in to keep storing them. Put them in the fridge. They won't contact the desiccant stuff and they'll be relatively safe. This won't make the seeds last forever but it'll stave off mold for long enough to get you to have a better chance of the seeds sprouting next year. You could certainly do this with plain glass jars of any size too as long as you add enough desiccant to make a difference and keep the seeds dry. Here is something you should know however: I don't know if seeds are better stored in paper so they can "breathe" in the fridge, or not.

Glass jars

• The kinds with plastic lids are best. You can use and reuse these for food storage in a fridge for literally years.
• Make jar salads twice or three times a week as a side dish or as a full meal and leave them in the fridge til you need them
• Make layers of yogurt and berries, top that with honey or something, and store those in the fridge as breakfast option, granola and/or toasted nuts on the side. Or, an option of overnight oats. Yogurt and berries will last for several days. Overnight oats... maybe, maybe not.
• Depending on how into DIY you are, these make good containers for homemade things like pickles, mustards, mayonnaise, ketchups, flavored honeys, herb vinegars, salad dressings etc.
• Put salad dressing ingredients in one. Shake. You now have a dressing.
• Fill one with some rocks or salt or something and close the lid tight. Weight for fermenting in a larger vessel.
• Freeze berries in them. Don't even bother washing them, just toss them in, put on the lid, freeze.
• Use as vases for wildflowers, sunflowers, flowers in general
• Make into luminaries for battery powered candles or real ones, though if you use real ones I highly suggest putting sand or salt at the bottom to prevent heat shock and also putting the jars on a plate or bowl also containing sand or salt. Dirt will also work. (God made dirt, dirt don't hurt, so put it in your mouth and let it go to work - kidding) Keep a spoon nearby to dip the wick into the wax to turn out the candle quickly if you need to, and also have easy access to a bucket of water and fire extinguisher. Also, trimming the wick to 1/4" with some scissors before you burn the candle is safer since the wick's less likely to burn too fast or too slow, or unevenly, then migrate over to the glass and (yikes) crack it. Never burn candles unattended. Also never within reach of anything flammable, and that means anything within 1 foot of the candle. Also never mix water droplets with candles as that will cause sparking.
• Fill them with some sort of gift goodie and give as gifts
• Store homemade potpourri mixtures in these so they can mature and the scents blend
• Good for storing beauty supplies in a bathroom so they can stay dry instead of be subjected to humidity and so on
• Make herbal vinegars for all-purpose cleaning in these, such as pine needle or orange peel vinegars, by filling the jar mostly to the top, covering that with vinegar and the lid (plastic, or metal lined with wax paper), gently swirling to ensure no air bubbles are in there, and forgetting about it for two weeks to a month, then straining the now-scented herb vinegar into a spray bottle then discarding the other stuff into compost
• Make herbal tinctures. Same process, but they're usually poured into tincture dropper bottles with a funnel, the time period of steeping is usually 2 months, and the liquid used is high proof booze. It's also encouraged to shake tinctures daily while they're being made.
• Make DIY beauty products and store them in these
• Wash lid and jar well and strip off the label. Let dry. Use to store: Dried herbs, dried spices, homemade herbal pills (yes, it is possible; coffee grinder+dried herbs+pill maker+empty pill capsules).
• Put sand on the bottom, maybe some rocks, mini starfish, seashells etc. then fill the rest with high proof vodka, rubbing alcohol or Everclear, and blue food coloring. Ocean in a bottle. Nice on a windowsill.

Glass bottles, any

• Use as vases for flowers

Upcycling

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