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According to some statistics, as much as fifty percent of Americans are on a prescription. All these pills come in a whole lot of bottles. Save 'em up, add a little copper wire, and you can make this little dome that looks like the bottles are exploding in an orange burst.
This lamp isn't the quickest to make, but if you don't count all the time saving up bottles, the actual construction time is just a few hours. The material cost, depending on what you have laying around, and, again, not including the costs of the prescriptions, is about twenty bucks. If you don't have enough friends and family members on medication to collect 24 bottles, then ask around the local nursing home or hospital. This lamp was mostly made of larger bottles for multi-month supplies; however, i wove in some other sizes as well. The basic dome-building technique can be used on other kinds of bottles as well, as long as they have a neck narrower than the body, and hopefully with threads to retain the copper wire that binds them together.
I've made another pill bottle lamp that you can see here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Pill_Bottle_Lamp/ That one is more rigidly geometric, and uses LEDs.
This lamp isn't the quickest to make, but if you don't count all the time saving up bottles, the actual construction time is just a few hours. The material cost, depending on what you have laying around, and, again, not including the costs of the prescriptions, is about twenty bucks. If you don't have enough friends and family members on medication to collect 24 bottles, then ask around the local nursing home or hospital. This lamp was mostly made of larger bottles for multi-month supplies; however, i wove in some other sizes as well. The basic dome-building technique can be used on other kinds of bottles as well, as long as they have a neck narrower than the body, and hopefully with threads to retain the copper wire that binds them together.
I've made another pill bottle lamp that you can see here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Pill_Bottle_Lamp/ That one is more rigidly geometric, and uses LEDs.
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Signing UpStep 1Building the Explosion
The explosion is pretty easy to make, and can be varied in geometry and size once you have a grasp on the basic idea.
To prepare the bottles, soak the labels off in warm water. The remaining gummy residue is very difficult to get off. I ended up using a product called Goo-B-Gone, which is some sort of citrus solvent. A toothbrush and some of the B-Gone took care of the stickum very easily. Then runt he bottles through the dishwasher or clean with warm soapy water.
Start by wrapping one turn of medium-gauge braided copper wire around the neck of one bottle, then twisting it off. I used copper to go with the orange bottles, but you could use other kinds. Take the free end of the wire and wrap it around an adjoining bottle in a figure-eight pattern. Add a third bottle, continuing the figure-eight loops around all three bottles. Pull the wire as tight as you can, so the "shoulders" of each bottle, right below the neck, all touch each other and lock together in a sturdy tripod. Twist the wire off without cutting it. If you have bottles of different sizes, use your three biggest ones to make this base tripod.
Add three more bottles in the gaps between the first three, following a figure-eight pattern around the perimeter of the new tier of bottles, while periodically dipping back to the original tripod to join the new layer firmly to the old.
Next, make three bottle pairs as shown. Wire them onto the previous layer.
Continue on, following a logic of three bottles and using the figure eight pattern to join them, until you have a complete hemisphere. On the last layer, I used six bigger bottles and six smaller ones, alternating. The last layer may be more flexible than the others. Run a lot of wire around the perimeter on the last tier, then tie it off to one of them.
You could stop here and use the explosion to make a hanging lamp, pendant, or shade over an existing ceiling bulb. Be sure to use a compact fluorescent because they don't get hot like incandescents, which could damage or melt the bottles.
To prepare the bottles, soak the labels off in warm water. The remaining gummy residue is very difficult to get off. I ended up using a product called Goo-B-Gone, which is some sort of citrus solvent. A toothbrush and some of the B-Gone took care of the stickum very easily. Then runt he bottles through the dishwasher or clean with warm soapy water.
Start by wrapping one turn of medium-gauge braided copper wire around the neck of one bottle, then twisting it off. I used copper to go with the orange bottles, but you could use other kinds. Take the free end of the wire and wrap it around an adjoining bottle in a figure-eight pattern. Add a third bottle, continuing the figure-eight loops around all three bottles. Pull the wire as tight as you can, so the "shoulders" of each bottle, right below the neck, all touch each other and lock together in a sturdy tripod. Twist the wire off without cutting it. If you have bottles of different sizes, use your three biggest ones to make this base tripod.
Add three more bottles in the gaps between the first three, following a figure-eight pattern around the perimeter of the new tier of bottles, while periodically dipping back to the original tripod to join the new layer firmly to the old.
Next, make three bottle pairs as shown. Wire them onto the previous layer.
Continue on, following a logic of three bottles and using the figure eight pattern to join them, until you have a complete hemisphere. On the last layer, I used six bigger bottles and six smaller ones, alternating. The last layer may be more flexible than the others. Run a lot of wire around the perimeter on the last tier, then tie it off to one of them.
You could stop here and use the explosion to make a hanging lamp, pendant, or shade over an existing ceiling bulb. Be sure to use a compact fluorescent because they don't get hot like incandescents, which could damage or melt the bottles.
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