Instant Easy Soda Can Jewelry

Intro: Instant Easy Soda Can Jewelry

           Have some soda cans laying around the house, some scissors, string, and a couple of nails? You can make instant jewelry for you and your friends with a few simple tools. This is a great last minute party trick to impress friends and have fun in the process.

You will need:

Empty Soda Cans
Scissors
Thread
Nail

Optional:

Hammer
Gloves


Instructable Courtesy of Acorn to Oak Handmade Team Secretary: Nick Wentworth

STEP 1: Collect Your Supplies

         Grab your recycling and wash out the cans. Let them dry while you make cute bunny ears. Pull out a couple pair of scissors, a few nails, and maybe hammer. Optionally if you're the paint kinda gal or guy you can use acrylic paint to finish any of your jewelry.

STEP 2: Pierce a Can

Take your scissors and stab into the can. You can wear gloves at this point, but we found we didn't need to. You should stab at one side or the other. We prefer the top as shown here.

STEP 3: Cut Off the Top of the Can

         Work your scissors around the can cutting off as you go. This should take a few seconds. Don't worry if there's left- over  soda in the can, wash it off and dry it with paper towels.

STEP 4: Repeat

            Cut off the other side of the can.

STEP 5: Cut Flat

     If you cut from one end to the other, you suddenly have a flat sheet of metal to work with. The whole can liked to curl so we cut ours into thirds to work with.

STEP 6: Start Cutting Your Metal

    Pick up your scissors and start carving away. You can do any basic shape you want. We tried Christmas trees, cats, fascinator hats. Soda can metal is easy to work with.

STEP 7: Point, Curl, and Shape Your Metal

           Shape your metal any way you want. A couple of the guys used nails and a hammer. You can just punch a hole with any nail through the metal to make your design.

STEP 8: Make Your Necklace

      Cut A Piece of Ribbon and Voila! Instant Necklace.

STEP 9: Create Other Designs

            Originally we were planning to only make jewelry, but any time you throw a lot of people in the mix, you get lots more creativity. Here's some of the things we made. What will you create?

Comments

[l8nite]

nice ! If you drag the curled sheet over a table edge, against the curve, you can flatten it out (kind of like curling paper but in reverse)

[Haus Page]

Thanks!

[Quiet_Clover]

if you freeze the cans you kind of have to time it right. if you pull the cans out just as they are turning solid you can cut them very cleanly and quickly with a razor/carpet knife, very effective for making lanterns or wind spinners where you don't want to remove the ends of the can. leaving them in too long freezes ALL the water, expands the can and bursts the sides. also when you fill the cans with water, don't fill them all the way to the top, leave a space above the top shoulder of the can, that way the ice has room to expand before it tries pushing ice out of the hole in the top. also if possible set the can on ice in the freezer so it is more likely to freeze from the bottom up.

[poofrabbit]

Are the edges really sharp? Can you sand them down?

[Haus Page]

Surprising the edges aren't sharp at all! We thought everyone would have to wear heavy gloves, instead the high school members of the group got busy making toy soldiers and goofing off. This was a very craft friendly group project. Probably would be perfect for a craft team like ours or an afternoon school project.

[poofrabbit]

In the summer I work as an art director for a children's summer camp, I wanted to check the sharp out because I thought man this would be a cool project for those kiddo's, I'm not very excited and will have to play! :)

[Haus Page]

Oh this would probably be perfect for that! Play with it and let me know what you come up with.

[flammaefata]

In my experience cutting cans with scissors (well in my case it's small scissors, not the big ones you used) left ragged edges sometimes that can be quite sharp and need to be trimmed off. But if you're careful and don't try to cut yourself with the cut edge I don't think it's very dangerous.

I also checked a few other instructables (I the one is for making butterflies out of cans and the other is making little boxes out of cans) and they've got other tips for cutting cans, including using can openers to take off the top (which works quite well) and freezing water in the cans so you can cut them with a carpet knife (which I'll try soon).

Oh and there's an instructable that includes tips for flattening the metal using an old sandwich maker.

Also check out the aluminium pendant tutorial for making stuff with the bottoms, and there're a few instructables for using the tabs for jewellery or making chain metal.

Thanks for the instructable!

[flammaefata]

Okay so I tried the "freeze water in the can and then cut it with a carpet knife" tip and it doesn't work at all. If the top of the can is not cut off before you fill it with water then the can bursts a seam (probably because ice clogs up the drinking opening before the rest of the water is frozen). Also it took a lot more effort to cut the can with the carpet knife in this way compared to cutting it with normal scissors. So I'll keep going the can opener+scissors route.

[Fogarty_10]

OMG that's nick! lol i went to school with him :P