Make a Decorative Napkin Holder from a Salad Dressing Bottle

Here are easy instructions for taking an empty salad dressing bottle and turning it into a beautiful decorative napkin holder! This easy project can be customized to each holiday season, or coordinated to your party's theme or color scheme.

For this project, you'll use a salad dressing bottle such as Hidden Valley Ranch. You want the shape of bottle that has a few inches of neck and then spreads out to a vaguely rectangular shape bottom. Begin by washing out the bottle thoroughly with a grease cutting dish-washing soap so that it won't be slippery or greasy at all. Go ahead and discard the lid. You won't be using it for this project.

Using scissors or a craft knife, cut off the cylinder neck of the bottle. Then cut the sides of the bottle away, starting from the open neck area and going down to the base of the bottle. Be careful not to cut through the base. Remember, it still needs something to stand on.

When you're finished, each side should look like a half oval, with the rounded side up. Each of the halves will still be connected to the rectangle on the bottom of the bottle.

Now you can begin your decorations on the inside of the bottle. With the sides cut away, you should now be able to easily reach the inside. Using a craft glue that dries clear, add whatever decorations are appropriate to your décor, or suitable for the upcoming season. You can cut holiday shapes from construction paper, find and cut out pictures from magazines, or draw your own artwork for this step. Use your imagination. Anything goes!

For a Christmas napkin holder, you might use leaves of a poinsettia plant. For a Halloween napkin holder you might use cutouts of jack-o-lanterns or crescent moons and so on. Lay each of your decorations in place and then wipe over the entire inside with a layer of craft glue to seal everything in place.

Let the glue dry thoroughly before putting in the napkins, so that they don't stick. During the off-season store your napkin holder where moisture won't affect the glue.

These decorative napkin holders are so easy to make that you can create one for all kinds of occasions in your home or make them to give away as lovely gifts.