Bottle Caps Ready for Spring

I'm so excited about this color combination! This shade of deep pink is rather hard to find, so we have to tip our hats to the wonderful people who have sent us their bottle caps that made this bracelet possible. With the green and pink looking both funky and fresh, I'm certain that this bracelet would feel at home at a dance club or a Sunday brunch without a problem. What more could a girl ask for? Go check out all of the other angles of it in the shop.

Still a few more to finish, so stay tuned! We hope to have these finished this week.

Wrapping Up the Bottle Cap Challenge… Literally.

Whew! The last of the Bottle Cap Challenge thank you packages will be sent out tomorrow! I couldn't resist making some cute little thank you notes special for the event as you can see above. All of the prints of Whole Hearted Half Toned are printed on 100% recycled paper and the cello bags are completely biodegradable and compostable (made from corn). We're also really excited to show the grand prize! Below is the custom bracelet made specially for our 1st place winner. She did an awesome job picking out the caps that adorn it. Thank you to everyone for making this such a fun experience!

A Starry Eyed Soliloquy

We just finished this rockstar-esque bracelet for one of our coworkers. We liked the idea of the stars so much that we cut enough for two bracelets, the second of which will be listed in the shop in a few days. This is going to be a super busy week because Saturday we leave for Florida!!!! Hooray!!!! I need this break. We'll be gone for a solid week. When we return, we'll be able to reveal the secret project we've been working on. I think this is going to shape up to be an interesting month overall. :)

Bottle Cap Challenge Winners!!!!

We're very happy to announce the winners of the 2008 Bottle Cap Challenge!!! The contest was a great success. We greatly appreciate all of the entries. All of the caps we've received will soon be turned into fabulous bracelets for the shop. We'll be contacting the winners over the next few days about their prizes and everyone's complimentary art prints will be mailed out this week, so sit tight! To see how this all began, click here. So without further ado:

Congrats to Miss Courageous for her winning 1st place entry: "Kona Beer"

Congrats to Hoshitora99 for her winning 2nd place entry: "Waialua Soda Works"

Congrats to Amy Skye McCaskie for her winning 3rd place entry: "Henry Weinhard's Root Beer"

Thank you again!

Recycled Bottle Cap Bracelet: Soda Caps

We were recently asked to make a bracelet with all soda caps for a teacher who couldn't wear beer caps around her students. Soda caps seem to be the most difficult to find since typically, restaurants don't serve them and consumers just trash them. Throw in the sad fact that most sodas are going with plastic packaging these days, and you'll find yourself in our predicament. I sincerely wish that more people out there would buy glass anyway. It's much more easily recycled and it's made from natural materials. Plastic is plastic. Even if you recycle it, eventually it will end up in a landfill, on the side of the road, or in the ocean. Glass can be recycled over and over again, and aluminum is better still since it takes the least amount of energy to recycle. Of course, we've all heard the theories that aluminum cans are linked to Alzheimer's disease, so we'll stick with glass.

In other news, we've officially decided to extend the Bottle Cap Challenge through Sept. 20th for a few late entries we know are on their way. If you haven't put yours in the mail yet, there is still time!!! Do it today! If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here.

Custom Bottle Cap Bracelet

Last week we received a custom local order from one of our favorite baristas. He couldn't wait for the end of our friendly competition, so he ordered one instead. It's our first request for all beer caps, which is amusing because we just got a request for all soda caps (which are much harder to find). I love the "g" in that center cap. Typography- what a wonderful thing. Don't forget that you could receive one of these for FREE by participating in our Bottle Cap Challenge. Find out more here.

Bottle Cap Challenge! Get a Free Bracelet!

We're always looking for interesting caps to use in our bottle cap bracelets, and to be honest, it's tough. We have several local restaurants who have saved caps for us, but typically you end up with the same old stuff that everyone carries. So we're turning to all of you for help in our quest and offering the chance to get a little something in return. Here's how you could receive a Free Bottle Cap Bracelet and more:

Be on the hunt for the coolest, most awesome, most unique bottle caps you can find. You can send as many different caps as you'd like, and each one will be judged on the following:
1. Color
2. Design
3. Rarity (Very important. We're looking for things we can't find easily.)

Best Bottle Cap: The individual who submits the most awesome cap will receive a free custom bottle cap bracelet with their choice of caps from our inventory (up to 14 caps depending on desired size).

Second and Third Best Caps: The individuals who submit the second and third best caps will receive $20 credit toward any item in our shop or any custom order.

EVERYONE: In exchange for the caps you send us, each individual who participates will receive one free 5 inch x 7 inch print of Whole Hearted Half Tone, one of our favorite ink blot illustrations as our thank you. See it here.

We'll collect caps between now and September 1st. Then, we'll look through them all and choose the three most spectacular caps which will be announced on September 10th. Edit- We are extending the contest for late entries! Anything that makes it here by Sept. 19th is accepted and the winners will be announced Sept 20th. We keep all of your caps for use in our projects, and you get a print and the chance to receive one of the above items. Please understand, only one print will be sent to each individual who participates no matter how many caps you send. If you are interested in participating, please send the caps to:

Michael Ayers
600 Embassy Row, Suite 450
Atlanta, GA 30328

Be sure to include:
1. your caps
2. a written list of the brand of each cap you include (ex: Silver Barq's Root Beer cap)
3. your name
4. email address (we will ONLY contact you if your cap is in the top 3)
5. your return mailing address (this is where we will send your free gift)

While we will faithfully send out all of your free gifts to the addresses provided, we will not be held responsible for lost packages. Thanks for your time and help. You can help us spread the word by putting this handy dandy badge on your blog (if you'd like).

Badge Embed Code:
<a href="http://greenspacegoods.blogspot.com/2008/08/cap-exchange-get-free-bottle-cap.html" target="blank"><img src="http://www.greenspacegoods.com/images/blog/bottleCapBadge.png" width="160" height="200" style="border-width:0px;" alt="GreenSpace Goods Bottle Cap Challenge!" /></img></a>

-Lani and Michael

Recycled Bottle Cap Bracelet: Hot and Summery

Mmmm.... orange and green, both warm and lush. We finally finished this bracelet. (See the beads a few posts below). I'd like to get some more done for the shop. I think this is a great combination of caps, some of which we only had one of. I'd like to do a blue and purple themed one, but purple is hard to come by without buying and drinking tons of soda yourself. It's funny how if we do buy a bottled beverage, we always based our selection on the quality of the cap.

FYI- it is now available in our shop:)

New Bottle Cap Bracelets!

Here is a peek at some of the beads we just finished, so now they just need to be strung and sewn. Hopefully they will be done soon. While in Ohio, I was able to find a few new soda caps we didn't have. If anyone has any funky caps they'd like to donate, please let us know. We'd love to have them. We're always looking for interesting designs. Pink and purple seem to be the most difficult colors to find. We also take custom orders for bracelets if anyone is interested. The finished product should look something like this:
Have a great week everyone :)

Eco-Bow of Death: Merry Christmas.

We sincerely hope that Michael's little sister will be smart and carefully remove this from her present instead of slicing her hand to pieces. We really are optimistic that she won't lose a finger tip permanently. (doctors are great at reattaching things now) Mostly, we are confident that she is up to date on her Tetanus shots... Ok. So maybe we're taking this whole "recycled" thing a bit far, but isn't it totally awesome? Michael spent way too much perfectly good time carefully constructing this little bottle cap saw blade torture trap of doom. But admit it- it is super cool. We'll stick to can bows from now on. They're safer.

Be safe this holiday season :)

Our First Custom Bottle Cap Bracelet

And I'm just tickled over it! This was a local order, so the customer picked out the caps themselves. Michael sharpened the punch with the Dremel and it is working out much better for us. Hopefully this is the start of many more custom orders. We don't make much off of these because they take so much time, but I enjoy them too much to stop. We hope everyone is having a great week!

Excuse me... Sir, could you please stop licking the magnets?

They do look yummy don't they? These were made out of some New Castle bottle caps. Michael carefully etched the paint off of the caps to reveal the metal below in the outer rings and center stars and then we coated them in various translucent paints. Needless to say, we won't be making any more. They are simply too labor intensive and no one wants to pay big bucks for bottle cap magnets. (But my aren't they pretty?) The outer edges are painted silver and they are clear coated for durability. Check them out in our Etsy store!

Testing...testing...1...2..

We've been trying to figure out bottle caps for a while now. Millions are dumped in landfills every day. They are small, but add up quickly. The problem is, there is plenty of bottle cap art out there. We just aren't big fans of any of it. I've seen caps that have been painted, glittered, glued, filled with photos, etc. (No offense to anyone who works with caps. To each his own.) I guess it goes back to my design roots. I appreciate the original artwork that someone designed for the cap to match the bottle's label. For me, that's what makes them cool. So we've been fooling around with a punch, trying to use the colorful caps in interesting ways and this is the first complete test piece. We took the sections of cap and domed them. They make some pretty nifty slide beads for this stretchy bracelet. We don't know if these will be offered for sale. I'm not satisfied with the quality of the punch cut yet, so I'm just going to wear this myself and see how I like it. Leave comments if you like the the look and we'll see if it is worth pursuing further. *Smiles* (*frowns* this post will knock Seamour off the first page! How sad!)

*update* We finished our first one for sale!!! Yay!! And it appeared on the front page of Etsy! You can see it here.