Bottle Cap Wine Glass Charms

Let’s try this again.

Though not the initial reason for asking friends to collect bottle caps for me, I soon had the idea of filling the caps with polymer clay to make unique wine glass charms. Not much of a wine drinker myself, this set is for the friend who has been my primary bottle cap supplier. Yeah, AK!

Today is not the day to go into depth on how to condition and prepare polymer clay (especially since my first draft disappeared) but I will do that some day soon. For now, I’ll just say that I used a pasta machine set on the thickest setting to roll out the clay. In order to make it thick enough to fill the cap, I folded the clay on itself, making it a double thickness.

To add an extra element to the charms, I first laid down a sheet of silver leaf on the raw polymer clay and then stamped it with six different circle design stamps. There is a red tint to these pictures because I was wearing a red shirt that reflected in the leaf.

Using a homemade circle template because none of my circle cutters were the right size, I cut out the charms then baked them in the oven to cure. The size was 1 inch diameter.

To show dimension.

Once they were cured and cooled, I used alcohol inks to add some color. Wine charms are used to give distinction to wine glasses and adding color really made them distinct.

I prepared the bottle caps by spraying them with stainless steel paint, allowing them to dry and then using a nail to punch two holes for the jump ring to slide into.

To adhere the polymer disks to the caps, I used the Precision Glue Pen by Gorilla Glue.

I looped some silver wired ribbon through the jump ring and tied a knot. I also used my zippo lighter to singe the edges of the ribbon to keep them from unraveling.

The little bit of wire makes it possible to simply wind the ribbon around the glass, though tying it works too.

Now I know I said I’m not a wine drinker and this set is for my friend but I like them so much, I kinda want to keep ’em…..

Guess I’ll have to make more.

Take care.

-amy c
_____________________________________________________________________________________