This Christmas, I had to get creative with the gifts I was giving due to the lack of money in my bank account... so surprising in this economy, right. So I decided to give all the girls in my life a pair of home-made earrings. Thanks to my beer drinking habit, I was able to accumulate a rather constant supply of bottle caps for the project. The only things I needed to purchase were a box of some 20 gage wire which I found in assorted colors and then the earring hooks to attach them to... all of this for about ten bucks which provided enough supplies for about 20 pairs... steal!! So first things first, I needed to puncture a hole in the cap with a nail and hammer for when I put the wire through later. It's easier to do this first because the nail will easily puncture the cap before its flattened. Second step is to flatten the bottle cap, which is the most annoying part and will take the longest depending on how many caps you are flattening. I used 4 caps per pair of earrings, so I had quite a few to flatten. Do this part outside, on concrete or some type of flat hard surface where you can hammer the metal cap and not damage anything. The easiest thing I found was to start by hammering out the rippled edges first and then start to flatten the entire thing.
After flattening all the caps, you can start to wire them right away if you want to keep the logo of whatever beverage it was taken from, or... prime and paint the caps various colors; which is what I did.
Once painted and dried, just puncture the 20 gage wire through the hole in one cap, make a swirl or some unique design with the wire to push against the cap, knot the wire around an earring post, and come back down to do the same thing to the second cap. And voila! You have a chic pair of earrings without breaking bank that are awesome conversation starters and a cool way to recycle!!
