New Jewelry A Day: Make a Bracelet from Beer Bottle Caps

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Make a Bracelet from Beer Bottle Caps

Before: Beer bottle caps

Bottle caps are a great material for jewelry making. In this simple project, we collected some interesting beer bottle caps. The bottle caps we decided to use were made by Lion Brewery have a nice design on the bottle cap itself and puzzles printed inside the cap.

We used the bottle caps "as is" without any further decoration. We simply drilled the bottle caps, made links and findings and constructed the bracelet... but you can change the look entirely by decorating the back of the bottle cap with decoupage or by using the bottle cap as a bezel and filling the bottle caps with resin, polymer clay or the item of your choice.

Materials
Beer bottle caps
16-gauge round brass wire

Tools

Gather tools

Automatic center punch
Drill and size 41 drill (.096) bit

Half-round file
Chain nose pliers
Round nose pliers
Wire cutter
Needle files or wire rounder
Steel bench block
Rawhide mallet

Step 1
Select the bottle caps and determine the order used for the bracelet.

Step 2

Mark bottle cap with center punch

Mark the bottle caps where you want to drill. Use an automatic center punch to indent the marked spot before drilling so the drill bit does not slip and the bottle cap does not go flying.

Step 3

Drill beer bottle cap

Drill each bottle cap. We used five bottle caps to create a bracelet about 8-1/2 inches long.

Step 4
Use round nose pliers, bail forming pliers or a mandrel to make large "S" shaped linked from the 16-gauge brass wire. We made four links to piece together the five bottle caps.

File the ends of the wire until smooth using the needle file, wire rounder or a cup bur and flex shaft. Place the links on the steel bench block and hammer with the rawhide mallet to harden the links so they retain shape.

Step 5