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THE CONCEPT This idea was the result of a few other odds and ends coming together in my mind. Part of it is largely due to my desire to create 3-dimensional wall art. I have endless ideas involving metal and glass and lights that are all still on paper or in my head. Another factor, and one that is semi-related to the first reason, is my long-term goal of having every decoration in my apartment be original or home-made. Thanks in part to Bonnie Burton. Beyond those I have a thing for collage art, and I threw a huge housewarming party with my old roommate Jill at our last place. The result of which was bottle caps as far as the eye can see. All of these things finally came together when I realized I could meet each of the above with this single project. It will be 3D and hang on my wall. It's an original creation. It's a collage. And the materials are already on hand. PROJECT SPECIFICS I didn't want to glue bottle caps to a board and call it a collage. It didn't seem all that interesting to me. The idea that made this project click for me was to have each individual bottle cap "float" above the board. I want to drill holes through a board in a grid pattern, and mount a screw to each. Sort of like a bed of nails when it's complete. Then to the head of each screw, mount the individual caps. This I assume would give the illusion that they are jumping out at you. It also serves to make the project a little more unique and not so bland. Aside from that, I have no specific plan, as it is difficult to map a collage. Depending on the specifics of the bottle caps, which are completely determined by random, the final collage may or may not have an aesthetic look to it. Maybe it will be a picture when it's done, maybe it won't. I also don't know if I will be able to generate a specific pattern based on colors or shapes, or if sticking them on in a completely random order will be the best way to go. I guess that is where the fun is. Seeing what is born out of all this randomness. MATERIALS
THE PROCEDURE
STEP 5: Layout the bottle caps. This is where I ran into a decision I needed to make. Do I want any duplicates within the collage? Or do I want each and every one to be unique. I pulled out my collection, which has been gathered over the past 1.5 years. 80 of them were unique, and then I needed to use duplicates. Based on how long it took me to gather those 80 unique bottle caps, and the fact that I will need 225 total, that means it will take another 2.78 years to get enough to finish. In the interest in not turning this into a life-long project, I am going to re-use my duplicates. PROGRESS June 2006:  Here is the collage as it currently stands. All marks have been drilled through. All screws have been mounted. The legs and feet are in place. Approximately 75% of the bottlecaps are in place. FINAL December 2007: This project began is 2002, and as of this writing 2007 is nearly over. The previous update here stated I was intending to re-use my repeat/duplicate bottle caps. I don't even remember wanting to do that at this point, and now that the project is finished I'm glad I kept them all original. Even though it took 5 years. I'm very happy with how this turned out. The completed collage is hanging in my kitchen, and reminds of me of my long-lost ambition to have every piece of art and every decoration in my home be entirely original and hand-made. So far that's not the case for the rest of my house, but time will tell. The collage looks at least as good as I had hoped, and is proving to be a great conversation starter. Click to enlarge:
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