Blowing hot air

Removing wine labels the easy way. Did I say pop the bottle in the oven for 10 min? No.

The easiest way: blow the bottle with hot air. I tried it yesterday. Using my old hairdryer / blow-dryer, holding it about 1 cm away from the bottle and blowing for about 2 min. The timing is by no means exact. Blow a bit, try to get a start on the label, blow a bit more. Please be careful, the bottle gets very hot.

This must be the fastest way of getting the wine label off the bottle. Once the label comes off, the back of the label is sticky, so I stick it onto a blank piece of paper.

If I drink enough wine this week, I should be ready to start my first decoupage project using wine labels this weekend.

Happy wining!

Wine Labels recycled

Wine labels are beautiful. So much effort, money and GLUE goes into getting a label onto a wine bottle. It seems like a real waste to dump the bottle(with label) to be recycled. Why not recycle the label as well.

I have visions of coffee/drinks tables, trays, coasters, tins, boxes covered in these beautiful wine labels. For years now, I've been trying to collect the wine labels of bottles that I've drunk. This is no easy quest. I've tried hot water inside the bottle, soaking in hot and/or cold water, soapy water, icy water. Nothing does it.

This is why we have Google. Google-It. Simple. Pop the bottle in the oven at 250°C for 10 min. and the label pulls of like the skin of a fig.

Now I'm looking forward to my next bottle of wine, so I can add to my collection of labels. I will post pictures of my first project.

This is the kind of thing I have in mind: Drawers with wine labels