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Monday, December 28, 2020

Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters

Hello, and welcome to the last Monday of 2020! At the end of the year I usually tend to do some decluttering. While I was going through my crafts closet this past weekend, I found a bag of bottle caps I had saved for a few upcycling projects and a couple of mangled cork coasters and decided to use them. 


Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters



So these bottle cap coasters are the result of two other failed projects...

The first failed project involved just the bottle caps - one of those Pinterest hacks that show you how you can melt bottle caps with a hot iron and turn them into coasters. Well, that sure didn't work. I followed the instructions and the bottle caps melted as expected and actually formed coasters. But coasters that looked like, well, melted trash and not the pretty flowers shown in the video. I didn't even bother taking pictures, though now I'm sorry I didn't document that epic fail. 


Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters


The mangled cork coasters were another story. A while ago I wanted to make cork coasters with a crocheted border. I got some blank round coasters from Amazon and punched holes in them - only to discover that punching holes into cork is not as easy as I expected. The holes looked awful and there was no way any crochet border could disguise them (not the coaster shown above - that one survived intact, but in the photos of the finished bottle cap coasters if you look closely you can still see some holes peeking in between the bottle caps). 


Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters


So to salvage the leftover bottle caps and the coasters, I decided to join both.


Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters

Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters



I glued the bottle caps over the coasters in the same flower shapes I was using to melt them, and called it a day. 

Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters

Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters



Overall I do like the end result. Because of the plastic these are not coasters you can place really hot cups or glasses on, but for cold or lukewarm beverages they work just fine. 


Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters

Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters



And in the end I managed to upcycle two items that I would have discarded otherwise, so I think it's a great end-of-the year project. 



Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters

Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters

Upcycled: plastic bottle caps & cork coasters



Happy Monday and happy holidays!

Keeping it Real, craft blog





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