25 Ways to Recycle Glass for Useful and Decorating Projects

With the need to recycle, we are all looking for ways to recycle materials into something useful or decorative. Glass is a wonderful material to recycle into something new.

You don't even have to own it at this minute. If you shop at a thrift store, flea market or rummage sale, you can always pick up some kind of glass piece very inexpensively. Just by buying a piece of glass for 25 cents to recycle, you keep that piece from going to a landfill.

Here are some ideas on turning old glass in to new decorative and useful items. In ideas below for 'good glue' you should have waterproof cement such as Bond 527 or silicone glue.

Old Glass Salt and Pepper Shakers - can be turned in to a small vase in a window sill holding a few pretty violets or pansies.

They can be used as hanging vases in a garden setting by taking 3 ten to twelve in pieces of wire and attaching them to a piece of wire that will go around the threaded part. You can add some glass beads to dress it up a little.

You can purchase some corks and turn a few into a nice spice rack.

An Old Fish Bowl - can be turned in to a mini garden by putting in a few pebbles, some soil, a few small plants add a small rock, shell or tiny statue and you have your own little mini garden.

You can add some colored sand and put in a few small candles for a little lighting outside.

You can turn it over and use it for a cloche outside.

Take a Tea Cup and Saucer - and put some dirt in it and a small plant and bring it to a sick friend.

Make a beautiful candle from it by putting a piece of wick a round a pencil, set on glass and pour in candle wax.

Take a good glue and glue cup and saucer together. Then glue a ¾ inch dowel on the bottom of the saucer for a birdfeeder or little birdbath.

Glass Cigar Tubes - can make a nice center piece on tables for a back yard party. Take some sand and put it in a terra cotta pot or a glass bowl. Put in a few cigar tubes and use as small vases.

They are great for putting beads in for crafting and can look so nice.

Drill holes in a piece of wood, can paint for in the kitchen and use as
a spice rack.

Wine Bottles - make nice vases or are pretty along a table with lights strung in them.

Old Colored Glass Dessert Plates - are cute in the garden as flowers. Take a wooden dowel for the stem and some wire to bend in shape for leaves on the stem, and paint green. Using good glue, glue the plate to the topside of the dowel, and let dry. For a center you can use an old glass ashtray, a glass lid or some glass gems.

You can build a glass totem or totem bird feeder with clear and colored glass using pieces like vases, bowls, saucers, plates, or stemmed dessert bowls. Work with pieces till you have the desired look, some upright, some upside down. When you get the desired look, start at the bottom and glue pieces together with good glue. If you would like to use this totem as a bird bath or feeder, a bowl will need to be your top piece. During cold winters put inside.

A large glass plate can be glued to a stemmed dessert bowl or stemmed glass to make a beautiful serving plate.

Glass or china plates or saucers make a nice border in a garden.

If you have a set of Old Dishes - with pieces missing, you can take a dinner plate, salad plate, saucer and two cups and make a three tiered dessert tray. Glue one cup upside-down on the dinner plate, then glue on salad plate, another cup up-side down and then the saucer.

Hurricane Lamps - are pretty with a pillar candle inside and a ring of flowers on the outside or turned it on its side and put a swag of flowers in it.

Broken pieces of Glass Plates - make beautiful mosaic pieces; table tops, frames, on planters, on bird houses or on bowling bowls for the garden.

Old Glass Globes - are good for hanging outside for lighting by putting candles in them or a string of lights.

A Glass Flower Frog - is great for serving shish kabobs. Take a canning jar or such and fill with sand, set on frog and put in kabob sticks.

Canning Jars - are nice for putting a string of light, some baby's breath or potpourri put a little doily on top and screw on ring.

They look good filled with shells, buttons or marbles collections.

Old Glass Cloches - are wonderful to put holiday or seasonal scenes under. Set on a doily or glass plate.