I've seen a pathway of wine bottles completely buried so that only the bottoms were showing - looked really neat, and for beer bottles you wouldn't need to dig near as deep!

If you have access to a rock tumbler or cement mixer, you could break the bottles and tumble them for a couple of hours to remove sharp edges, or for several hours to get 'beach glass' and then embed the pieces in concrete...

Sheryll

Bury them upside down so that all you can see is the flat bottom to make a path in your garden. I have seen pictures somewhere of this on this site...I have wanted to do this for a while.

Or break them into small pieces and tumble them in a cement mixer and use them as mulch around stepping stones. I did this last summer with a bunch of bottles and put it around my stepping stones in my garden path. We walk on it barefoot all the time and noone has been cut. Tumbling makes it into sea glass and removes all of the sharp edges.

You could use some of them as the bottoms of garden mushrooms by topping them with a pretty bowl.

If you have access to a kiln, you could melt them down and make cheese plates out of them.

Cut the bottoms off with a bottle cutter or tile saw. drill holes in it and add chimes.

Those are all of the ideas I can think of right now. If I come up with more I will share them with you.

(I think if it were me I would like to bury them and make a path:)

I really like the path idea, but after doing some research I have 2 questions

It gets really cold here (-30F) in the winter, will the bottles break?

And how slippery do you think they would be?

Maybe I'll just try it and find out.

If I found them ...... I would have scooped every one of them up ! I'm glad you did ! You might not have an idea right now ........ be patient ... there's so many things you can do with them .

Myself ..... I would lay them out on the ground - so they form a fence ( right side up - upside down ... ) just next to each other . JB Weld has a putty that you knead and just put a little bit on each bottle to connect it together . Let it dry - and you'll have an awesome fence !

With the kiln idea, you can make wind chimes.
I have a 'coke/4 other small bottles one', that
I have had for years. They were flattened in
a kiln. They inserted fish hooks in the bottle
mouth before firing them (with the eye outside),
and then used fishing line to hang them on
driftwood. A limb would work too.

Of course there is always a bottle tree. I have
been saving the beer bottles from my roadside
where they have been tossed out. I hope to mix
them with green bottles.

Sheryll, I thought it was funny that we must have been answering the post at the same time (noone had responded when I started writing my answer) and came up with almost the exact same answers. Just found that amusing.

I have my stained glass stepping stones outside all the time here in Michigan. I haven't had any problem with them breaking. I think I would leave the tops off so that any moisture in them could get out. If they did break I think it would be underground and not the tops (or rather bottoms) so noone would get cut. The glass gets a little slippery sometimes but if you leave a little bit of space between them like grout lines, there would be enough friction to keep that from being a problem.

I use wine bottles stuck half way in the ground, and lined up as an edging in my flower beds, you could do outline a really large bed.
Syble

I love the edging idea too. They would really be great with lights strung in them before you bury the top in the ground. Then you would have a lighted edging. I am going to have to start using some of the bottles I have been storing......

The bottles in this walkway are filled with sand. I wonder if that makes a difference in the stability of the bottles.
~JoAnn

Here is a link that might be useful: bottle bottom walkway

My first thought when I read your subject of post: "Help! Help! What can I do with 300 beer bottles?" ...was to tell you to grab 2 good friends & the 3 of you sing, "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, 99 bottles of beer... " ...as you sat on the ground inserting them upside down for a glass path ... as smicker mentioned & others above. LOL...sorry!

Lots of good ideas here...just hoping to share a laugh! WAY to recycle! Tumbled glass sure is awesome but I've never tried it...I love it on Smicker's stepping stone path! Jeanne S.

Here is what one guy did with a bunch of beer bottles in northern Wisconsin. If you look closely at the concrete scupltures, you'll see lots of brown and green beer bottles.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fred Smith's Concrete Park

Funny you should post this today. I just was looking at a blog tonight where they made an awesome walkway. Its really cool!!! They used 750 bottles so far and said they need another 500!!!

Here is a link that might be useful: Beer bottle walkway

Send to my bro-in-law. He'll fill with home brew LOL.

You remind me of myself answering the Freecycle ad for 300 trophies :-)

I like them as garden edging, here's a pic ~tenderlee

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:185433}}

smickerdoodle - I laughed too when I saw we posted the same two ideas basically at the same time! Your idea with the kiln is great - I WISH I had access to one because I really like the look of glass melted together.

I'm currently saving wine bottles to make some raised beds with, but I have a long way to go. Good thing I like wine!

Sheryll

Wow, what neat ideas! If you make a pathway where most all of the bottles are buried and just the bottom shows, maybe you could cut the tops off & make bottle chimes out of them? I saw blue ones made with 3 top bottle halves for each chime. You can add other embellishments or wind catchers to make each chime look different. Double duty bottles. Triple duty if the other folks got tipsy. LOL I like the idea of the garden or lawn edging, especially since some of it can get so expensive. Have fun!

Great ideas everyone!

I brough another 50 home tonight. They are mostly green - yay!

I'm leaning toward the beach glass idea. I have a cement mixer. Then I could make some cement stepping stones and embed the beach glass in the top.

I thought about a wall, but my yard is pretty small and full LOL!

I'm tellin' ya catalinagrey ... you'll be making lifesize sculptures embedded with those bottles yet! he-he.

I love the path made up of bottles but I'd be worried they would break in our frigid climate. I'm sure some moisture would get inside the bottle and freeze. But maybe beer bottles are tough enough to handle it. I really liked the edging idea too.

Make sure to show us pictures of whatever you do with it!

How long does one put glass in the cement mixer? And do you add water or anything to it?

Now I can't stop singing ----

"300 bottles of beer on the wall -- 300 bottles of beer ...... take one down , drink it down .......299 bottles of beer on the wall" !

Once you tumble them in the cement mixer, you can use them for "mulch" in your flower beds. That's what I did and it's really cool looking. Luna, I ran mine for about 1-1/2 hours which was longer than I think I should have because they were more frosted than I wanted. You just cover them with water like you would in a regular tumbler and add about a cup full of sand.
Enjoy!
Ann

I have a dn who works for a com who dilivers wine he brings me the wine that is not any good .i am saving for mulch and have used them in mosaic and some of the sunken bottems make realy neat tops for Mo musrooms real neat!! I just love them .I started saving for bottle tree .I will post soon.

Well I'll be, there is life after all the beer is gone!
I'm gonna have to switch to bottles!
Great ideas!

LOL Tex, that's how I get my bottles, both wine and beer!

I use them for garden borders too. I use fiberglass fence posts (which are basically dowels) cut in half so each half is about 2 ft or a bit longer. I pound these into the ground leaving an approx one foot section sticking out, and slide the bottles over them. I left spaces between them so I can get inside with the weed trimmer. I'm lazy and let mother nature remove the labels over time, which is why some still have their labels in the pictures. Hubby loves my bottles when he's mowing because they are easy to see, unlike the rock borders I used to have!

{{gwi:185434}}
{{gwi:185435}}
{{gwi:185436}}

I remember the photos of the garden path of buried wine bottles. I seem to remember that she had sand between them, and she wrote that walking on the path barefoot was like getting a foot massage. It was a really neat looking effect. I think she lived in Florida, or some other warm place, so that breakage from frost was not a problem with her buried bottles.

what great ideas! I've been Off line for a bit and I really enjoyed reading all this! Tenderlee, I particularly like your double edgingon your raised beds. I think I'll try that. Loved seeing the amazing sculptures from Wisconsin too.
kathy

My apologies, concreteprimroses, those aren't my bottles in that pic. I found that pic when trying to find a use for catalinagrey's bottles, and remembered seeing a bottle border in the past, so I just googled it. I really don't know who the pic belongs to. Wish it WAS mine lol .... looks like a lot of work :-) sorry 'bout that. ~tenderlee