Bottle Cap Bracelet Tutorial

I found the awesome work of KOTIK on my new go-to webcrawler meets social media site Pinterest. This amazing reuse was inspiring and convent seeing as though my brother-in-law, Mike, was getting married and I wanted to give them something hand made with love.  Mike and Mary (M&M) have a strong beer history as a couple, including there proposal on a Pacific Northwest Beer Tour, plus all Mikes years on the Chico rugby team. He had collected a case of every seasonal Sierra Nevada for a year to serve to his guest at the wedding.

I had planned to ask the bartender to collect a few bottle caps for me so I could make Mary the awesome bracelet, as a wearable keepsake of her day. With all my good intentions, I dropped the ball and totally forgot until Jenna, Bob and Mikes cousin from Ohio, asked me if I got any bottle caps. Needing a refill/restart on my glass of wine*, Bob and I went over to the bar and politely asked the bartender if he had any bottle caps.

The craft gods were on my side that day, they had saved all the bottle caps in a cardboard box from the whole night! I chatted with the event coordinator about my plans to create the bracelets and where the idea had come from. He was really kind and even asked for me to send him pictures.

There were 143 bottle caps, of a whole variety of colors. Looking at the bottle caps, and thinking about Mike and Mary and there Opposing Bay Area Baseball Obsession, the idea to make A’s/Giants bracelet for them came to be! Check out the awesome results below.

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1. Bottle Caps (12 men, 10 women) + 5 for practice

2. Needle Nose Pliers

3. Hammer

4. Old journal or book (something you don’t mind trashing)

5. Round Nose Pliers & Wire Cutters (not shown)

6. Awl

7. Glass Beads (2 strand of coordinating color for each bracelet) + spacers 2x amount of beads

8. 24 Gauge Wire (I used silver, go with what matches)

9. Clasps (one set each) and Jump Rings (2 per bracelet)

This was my first attempt to create something I pinned on pinterest, and it was really rewarding to reverse engineer these gifts for the enginerds in our family. So here’s the step by step with images, I hope you give this a try!

Prep work:

Step 1. Choose your bottle caps.

There were 143 bottle caps, of a whole variety of colors to choose from for M&M’s wedding presents. I had an Idea to make a dome with a hart in the middle, M&M’s reception was in a geodesic dome, but scratched the idea in case the two lovebirds wanted to create something themselves.  I wanted to make sure that there were enough left after my project so setting aside enough caps for the dome worked out well, and can also double as an idea for M&M future project.

Step 2. Shop for coordinating bead, wire, clasps and any additional tools.

I had to do a little research into the craft of creating jewelry out of recycled metal, especially what could be used to create the holes for stringing. The tool I needed to pick up was an alw, or more specifically a Scratch Awl, used for wood working. I picked mine up at the Dixieline Lumber for $7.19 + Tax at my local hardware store in Solana Beach. They had a few options, and I went for the awl with a metal button at the top for extra strength for as well as a target for hitting with a hammer.

Additionally, I picked up beads at South Sun Beads, their showroom is in the same neighborhood as my office, so it was a great stop on my lunch break. Let me tell you, if you’re ever in San Diego and looking for a great place to brows for beads, they have an giant showroom, and a sidewalk sale with discounts daily.

Step 3. Dry run of bead making.

Be sure to practice with spare bottle caps, we always have beer in our house, but you could pick up a six pack of your favorite micro-brew bottles on the way home from picking up your supplies.

(1) Practice Bottle Caps, at least 5 (2) Project Bottle Caps, separated & put aside (3) Tasty Beverage, I chose vodka lemonade in M&M’s wedding pint glass ♥

Follow the steps bellow on how to make beads from bottle caps.

Bead Making:

Step 1. Use needle nose pliers to score bottle cap on the median.

Step 2. Using both hands continue to fold the bottle cap along the median, until the edges meet.

Step 3. With the rounded edge facing you, flatten the corners with needle nose pliers. Repeat on other side.

Step 4. Place flat edge of bottle cap on the journal or book. Using your non dominant hand hold the awl with the pointed tip on the flat edge of the bottle cap. With dominant hand firmly hit the awl with the hammer. Inspect cap to make sure the whole is all the way through. Repeat on the other side.

Step 5. (not shown) Using round nose pliers carefully straiten the now pierced flat edges of the bottle caps.

Step 6. One you think you’ve got the process down with your practice bottle caps, repeat steps 1-5 with the caps you selected for your project.

Stringing Bracelets

Step 1. Lay out pattern.

Step 2. String bead one side at a time as fallows. Start the strand with 10 spacers to make up the height of the bracelet. For the bracelet: spacer, bottle cap bead, spacer, bead, spacer, repeat until all bottle caps are used, finish with a spacer. Finish with 10 spacers to make up the height on the other side.

Step 3. String the other side with the exact count of spacers, making sure that the bottle caps lay flat.

Last Step 4. Attach the clasps using a jump ring. Be sure that the loops of the bead strands are together with the clasp on the end. Placing the clasp in between the bead strand loops strains the wire and can cause breakage.

conclusions

From a scale of easy to epically difficult (1-5) I would give this project a solid 4. This project is time intensive and technically challenging to execute with the use of the awl.

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