Starting Out

So I have this project... Making fish out of bottle caps. It is a project that seems like it has taken a bit of time to get rolling, but I am still as excited about it today as I was when I first had the idea.

Since college I have collected bottle caps, you know, the metal ones that twist off or pop off of soda and beer bottles. I always assumed I would do something with them, but what? So about a month ago I searched "bottle cap crafts" on Google and saw some pretty neat things out there that people are doing. Everything from jewelry to tables to lampshades to coasters. Then I came across the Web site of John T. Unger. He makes these really cool fish out of bottle caps! Each bottle cap represents a scale so they can get pretty big—which means lots of caps needed. I love the looks of them and there is the freedom to get pretty creative with the designs too.

Since seeing his website I have been on a mission: to make bottle cap fish like his!!

I knew right off that I would need WAY more caps than the 3 growlers I had full of caps. So before I could start on the fish mission I would have to work on a collecting bottle caps mission. I have a bunch of my friends collecting them for me, my boyfriends sister purposely buys beer now that have cool caps. I also have asked a few local restaurants to collect them for me and I swing by regularly to pick up what they have. As well I will post things to my twitter page and facebook page every now and then. Besides the bars and restaurants ciraigslist has actually been a good source. I post every few days to different states in hopes to get different caps that I wouldn't usually have access to here in Maine. I just got about 4 lbs from a guy in Alaska, which was totally cool!

So I am collecting, and collecting, and collecting. I have a large tub full currently plus a bunch of sandwich baggies and a few gallon bags full of ones I have already cleaned. Always looking for more though :-) I have come across some really cool ones, as well as ones I have no idea what kind of beer/soda they came from. Which is one of the reasons for starting this blog... to post images of those mystery caps and see if anyone out there knows what they came from. I am also going to keep everyone updated on my progress and add images of the different caps I get as well.

I should mention a very special thank you to my boyfriend, Kevin, who has put up with bottle caps overtaking the kitchen. We have recently come to a compromise that he won't complain about "all those darn caps" if I keep them out of sight out of mind while I am not working on everything.