If you attend garage and estate sales on a regular basis, you can find pretty colored bottles with cork tops that can be used to add color to your home. These bottles can also be found inexpensively at most craft stores and come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and hues. One way to make these bottles even more interesting is to add some decorative touches to the cork top. This can take a rather ordinary colored bottle and turn it into a masterpiece. Here are three ways to make a decorative bottle stopper:

Technique No. 1

Head to your local hardware store and ask them to direct you to the drawer pulls. Drawer pulls come in a variety of interesting shapes, colors, and materials, most of them being made of glass, metal, or ceramic. Pick out a few that will go with the color scheme of your home and give your bottles an artsy look. Each drawer pull comes with a screw that's used to insert the pull into the drawer hole. Once you return home, remove the screw from the drawer pull and slowly twist it into the center of the cork top on your bottle. Once you have a pathway established for the screw through your cork, place the decorative pull on the screw and insert it firmly into the cork. Voila! You have a bottle with a beautiful decorative stopper.

Technique No. 2

The second way to make a unique decorative bottle stopper is to use interesting beads to decorate the cork of the bottle. Visit your local bead or craft store and ask for a hat pin finding. This is a long heavy, straight pin with a sharp point and a tiny flat metal base at the top to hold beads to create a hat pin. While you're there, pick out beads to decorate the cork of your bottle by slipping them on the hatpin until you get an arrangement you like. Usually two or three large beads work best. When you return home, place your beads on the hat pin and use the sharp point of the hat pin to create a channel through the cork. Once you've created a channel, use metal cutters to trim the length of your hat pin until it fits into the channel with the beads resting on the top surface of the cork. Apply a small amount of Krazy glue to the exposed surface of the pin and slip it into the channel so the beads on the pin are supported against the surface of the cork.

Technique No. 3

The final way to make a decorative bottle stopper is to use the surface of the cork to attach decorative objects. You can glue stacks of buttons to the top of the cork, interesting glass stones, or even pieces of smooth beach glass. If you want a more whimsical look, check out the section of your craft store that carries miniatures. Find a cute miniature and glue it to the top of the bottle cork. Five minute epoxy glue works very well for this type of project.

Now that you have you've transformed your glass bottles into works of art, display them proudly in your home. They'll add a unique touch to any room in your house.