Saturday, March 22, 2008

Bottle Caps, Bottle Caps, Bottle Caps

Capitalize on Re-use: Alexandra Camacho and Lauren Foster

Our final product is a shower curtain made completely from water bottle caps, the sealer rings first connected to the cap, plastic grocery bags, and a sheet of plastic. Each of our materials are environmentally sound because with the caps they are of a plastic that cannot be melted and re-made into another product. Plastic grocery bags for the most part are made from polyethylene which makes it a nonrenewable source. The clear plastic lining that we used is a low density polyethylene. An example of this plastic would be a dry cleaned garment bag. We chose these materials because they are water resilient. Water should not damage them.

The caps were cut in a radial motion which flattened them, giving them a different appearance instead of the known shape of a bottle cap. The sealer rings were cut in half and applied to two of the caps to create a hook that would hook onto a rod. The grocery bag was cut into stripes and tied onto the caps in a way that the
joint is not seen.Making this portion of an entire shower curtain took about four to five hours total(estimated time for just one person).



Process:

This image is of the first ideas that I personally had. Clearly our shower curtain ides was inspired by the shape that I first drew out on paper.


Our first approach at gathering some supplies to begin experimenting.

This was our first idea of connecting the flattened bottle caps. We felt that maybe we could use the pull tabs on aluminum cans.


The first model gave us some inspiration for new ideas or aspects to turn away from. The way that we connected the caps was with the sealer rings that also come on the bottle. These rings created a interesting aspect that happened to make the curtain curl. We liked how this happened but we were unable to design a better way for them to connect to the cap. For this model every piece was jammed into one little slit. At this point for our final product we decided to keep the rod hooks at the top, the color combination, and the same method for flattening the bottle caps.

This was something I created why trying to get my mind to come up with a new way to join the bottle caps. This one bottle cap became quite heavy very quickly by adding five pull tabs. We felt that the weight of a final full size shower curtain would be entirely too heavy.

We then were instantly inspired by Suzanne's plastic shopping bag purse. We felt that we could use the twisting technique because it would be sturdy and strong. Twisting the plastic makes a huge different in strength compared to the original orientation of the bag. The plastic stretches way too easily and even comes to the point of ripping if a twisting motion is not taken advantage of.

Once again we had to go dumpster diving to find a even larger collection of water bottle caps. Although flattening the caps did not take too long our hands did feel like they were on the verge of falling off.


Alexandra hard at work!

Finally after several hours of tying grocery bags to the caps the final model was complete. Michelle is modeling how someone might look showering behind the bottle cap shower curtain.


We felt that sense we were not going to be able to complete an entire shower curtain for our final model we should show you what the entire curtain would look like in a bathroom environment.


This drawing show the connection made between two or more bottle caps. We drilled hole in the ring that is on the inside of the cap. Then grocery bag was threaded through it and tied into a knot. Depending on the location of the cap, some had two, three, or four holes.


This drawing shows how the hook is attached to the rest of the curtain. Small slits were cut and the sealer ring off of the bottle, after being cut in half, was wedged very snuggly in the slit.

Our shower curtain is simple and sleek. We created a repetition in our pattern layout for the entire curtain that we feel is not too distracting. Our color choices were chosen the way they were because of the type of bottle cap that they were. We found that most water bottles had similar caps that typically came only in clear or bright blue. Both these colors create a sense of flowing water.

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