Mini Plates from Bottle Caps

This is an easy tutorial, but in one way a little hard. All you need is a bottle cap and some forms of smashing it. Like a hammer, or a mallet. And some incredibly awesome painting skills, unless you'd rather use the printer. :)

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Materials:
Bottle Cap
Hammer/mallet
Optional: Paint 

Instructions Part 1 -
To Smoosh the Bottle Cap:

Step 1: Grab your bottle cap. Try to get rid of as my deformities as possible, meaning it should be as close to a perfect circle as it was when it was on the bottle.

I used the "twist off" one, so it is always a perfect circle.

Step 2: Put it on a hard surface (like the driveway outside), with the flat part down, and slowly start hammering, making sure the edges are going in, not out.

See the edges coming in? Sometimes, if it has a deformation, half of it will go in and half of it will go it. That is not good. When you see it starting to go out, hammer it on the edge so that it goes back in. If that doesn't work, start a different one :) :)

Step 3: Finish it off. Make sure to completely flatten anything sticking up.

As you can see, it is not perfectly circle even though I started with a perfectly circle bottle cap.

Step 4: Turn it over a give it a few hits to the middle to give it some convexity. (Or is it concavity?) :) :)

Instructions Part 2 - 
Painting your plate (Optional):

Step 1: Paint your base color.

Step 2: Add a border (If you want)

Step 3: Add flowers, or other decoration. 

Here is some inspiration:

I could never paint as good as this! :)

Or, print out a picture/draw a picture and double-sided tape it to your bottle cap. Like I did in the end because my painting was horrible and it wasn't drying. (The print out a picture option would have looked better, right? Just resize and print out that picture I have on top...) 

I know right, my drawing is horrible too. :)

Step 4: I don't have this, but some people have some sort of glaze that will give it a shiny look. Will clear nail polish will work? Modge Podge? You'll have to try it out. :) :)

Step 5: Serve some awesome mini food on it! An awesomely DIY plate deserves some awesome food!

Yes, I drew the background. Thank you :)

You are done with your awesomely amazingly DIY but hard to decorate bottle cap metal plate that would have looked better if it had been painted but is now covered with paper!
Enjoy!
-Erin