Urban capping


Are you tired of all this waste flooding your environment? Here’s a fun project to brighten up your view: Urban Capping. This is your chance to reuse these bottle caps and pieces of tie wrap you find lying on the street everywhere.

How to make a bottle cap lace

Measure

Measure the circumference of the object to wrap. The lace will need this length plus an extra 5-10%. Use a mould with the same circumference, for instance a flowerpot, to test your lace for real.

Layout

Layout your bottle cap like this:

By using a double rope, the bottle caps can be fixated to have them all facing the same direction. By using a tie wrap, you can wrap the lace fast while leaving the possibility to undo the wrap: just insert a screw driver into the tie wrap insertion hole and the wrap comes undone.

Middle cap

Tail cap

The last bottle cap only needs two holes plus the tie wrap insertion hole:

Drill four holes into each cap, except for the first and the last cap:

Making the tie wrap insertion hole takes some practice. You can use a small chisel (6 mm or 1/4 inch) and give five pushes (U-shape & V-shape) on the inside of the bottle cap. Then use a sharp knife to finish it.

Head cap

The first bottle cap requires two holes plus an outlet for the tie wrap:

You can use a saw to start clearing the hole and then use a sharp knife to finish it.

Assembly

Tie the caps together, fix the piece of tie wrap and you’re ready to wrap.

How to make a bottle cap flower

Create a bottle cap lace, and add a circle of buttons to the second-last bottle cap:

Happy capping!

Freddy Vulto, Netherlands

PROFILE

Freddy Vulto (1971) makes curtain caps from used plastic bottle caps that he often picked up along the road. He uses the caps to create images by arranging them by colour.

With his work Freddy wants to inspire and show other perspectives.

Freddy works in IT as a software engineer. In his spare time he is a member of Ars Peintura.

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