Solar Garden Orb

 

You know when you see something and just know you can make it into a great project?  When I saw this empty round bottle I knew I had to keep it.

I woke up in the middle of the night finally realizing what I could do with it! A solar Garden Orb....yeh, I'm a sucker for those solar lights!

I decided I would cover it with pennies. Grabbed supplies needed - the bottle, pennies, and my GE Silicone. A staple supply I ALWAYS keep on hand. It's perfect for outdoor projects. It adjusts to the temperature and hasn't failed me yet.

This has to be the easiest project to do. Just glue the pennies onto the bottle,

I covered a section at a time. They can slide, so I kept the bottle upright for the section I was working on and let dry overnight.  

It doesn't matter which end you start at - top or bottom. Keep adding round and round. 

Even though I was trying to keep the current section upright so the pennies wouldn't slide...at times they did. I used tape to hold them in place until dry.

The bottom can be kind of tricky. After all it will be the top of your orb when finished, so you want it to look nice. If you're bottom happens to work out to be able to cover it in pennies consider yourself lucky! If not you can decide how you will go about finishing it. Either leaving an open rim or nudging the pennies to hang a little over the side.

Once I had the bottom covered, I placed my penny jar on top to keep them in place and be sure they made good contact since this bottom was a little concave,

Finished...almost.

I stuck a string of solar lights down into the bottle,

Voila!

Now to figure out where to put it. 

After walking around my gardens I decided to place it in my garden bike's basket.

Love it! It looks great from the street!

My kind of project:

Easy

I can work on it when I have time

Recycled a bottle

Very inexpensive

Looks great

- and best of all -

light without electricity!

More projects here