Rainbow Caps

When you live in a beachy, touristy location, bottle caps are abundant, so I'm always trying to think of ways to re-use them. This contest was great for that. Most of the colors are easy to find- but purple ones are pretty scarce.

When I start a project, it's hard to know just what tools or supplies I'll be using, as I might have to try several different ways to get the results I'm after. The photo with the caps is stuff I know will be used, the other photo has the things I ended up using in addition to what's in the first pix.

can (or other object) to cover

bottle caps, plastic tubing

gesso & paint (I used acrylics) & paintbrushes

glue gun, E600 glue

Xacto knife, heavy duty scissors, clamp, ruler

also used painter's tape but it's not pictured

Before anything gets done, I had to see if the caps would fit on the can and not leave any big gaps.

For starters, I covered the can with gesso, and when it was dry, marked off spaces for the rainbow.

I used painter's tape to mark the lines. This took a while, as there was some drying time between colors. After everything was done and dry, I sprayed on some sealer.

I wanted to give it a more finished look, and was trying to think of something to use around the top and bottom edge. I thought maybe some sort of tubing would work (I'm sure this is not the first time someone has done this). The hardware store had lots to choose from- I picked this black plastic and also a clear plastic, which I ended up not using.

After several botched attempts, it dawned on me to mark a line to follow when doing the cutting. A piece of chalk run across the top of the tube did the trick. A sharp xacto knife worked to make the cut- but you have to watch out not to cut all the way through.

Getting the tube onto the can involved a bit of wrestling. It was such a tight fit that I didn't use any glue, except for where the two ends come together. To keep it in place while it dried I used a clamp.

Since these caps were all found, I gave them a bath to clean them up, then chose the ones I wanted to use.

Using a glue gun to attach the caps went quickly (those other tools next to the can on each side were to keep it from rolling around). There were a lot of 'threads' of glue, but they came right off.

There was a small gap in the tubing around the top. To fix it, I filled it in with some of the glue from the glue gun and painted it black- it's a bit rough, but not rally noticeable unless you look close. Now all there needs to be done is find something to put in it!