KENNEBUNK — What started out as a weekend project with her grandchildren has become an uplifting yearly hobby for a retired Kennebunk woman on a mission to send positive messages and promote smiles, one bottle at time.

“I started my message in a bottle project over 10 years ago after  a weekend with my grandsons who where 8 and 10 at the time.  We were trying to find something fun to do for the last few hours before their parents came to pick them up; so, we filled a wine bottle with my email address and a short note,” said Bonnie Collins of Kennebunk. “My older grandson, Clayton filled an Altoid Box with two Red Rose Tea statues and my email address. The tin was found quite fast since he had buried it in the sand at the beach. The lady who found it was very excited and was taking it back to Michigan where she was going to bury it in the sand at Lake Michigan.”

Collins said that the bottle was not found for three years. 

“The couple who found it lived in New Jersey and were going to put my message and one of their own in a new bottle and send it out again. I never got a message return from that re-launch- but, I did continue to send out bottles each year after that with messages asking for responses,” Collins said.

Each year, her messages in the bottles vary, but they always have a positive and a special meaning. 

“Last year,  my message was to promote Alzheimer patient caregiver awareness. I asked bottle finders to give caregivers a break or a smile every once in a while,” she said. “We have family members who have survived breast cancer, so one year I promoted women’s yearly mammograms.”

Collins said that when she first started doing the messages, she put marbles in the bottles.

“I thought that the marbles inside would make a ‘glass –against- glass’  noise to draw attention to the bottle,” she said. “Now we include vintage costume jewelry pieces and beads and trinkets and have asked that whoever finds the bottle create a bracelet or sun catcher with the contents and send us a picture.”

Friends and family members save wine bottles for Collins for her project, and local restaurants such as Duffy’s Tavern and the Kennebunk Inn save corks for her.

“My husband  whittles the corks to fit and we seal them in wax from used candle stubs we also collect after we put our message and a few tiny trinkets in,” Collins said.

After the bottles are sealed, Collins will take them down to the breakwater and toss them into the sea when the tide is going out. 

“In the summer if there are kayakers near the breakwater, they will sometimes take my bottles out further. I’ve enlisted the help of fishermen to drop bottles off shore as well,” she said.

According to Collins, most of the bottles are found at beaches in York County, though a few have made it to parts of Massachusetts and Cape Cod, and she did receive one response from California. In 10 years, almost all of the responses she has  received have been positive. 

“Most  of my responses are from people just happy to find a message in a bottle and they want to ‘float it forward’ in their own way as well. I have only received one response with negative feedback  in  all of these years- it was a person who was concerned about sea life swallowing beads in the bottle,” she said.

Collins has carefully documented all 50 responses over the last decade from her yearly endeavor, which she keeps a detailed log including names, locations, responses etc.

“It’s a neat way of communicating- people feel connected when they find a note in a bottle that has been carried by the tides and sea, and they almost always vow to ‘ float it forward’ themselves afterwards,” Collins said.