Coke Bottle Lamp and Bottle Cap Lampshade

This project began over the summer with a Coke bottle that has been displayed on a shelf above my desk for about 8 years.  I decided it was time to do something to make it useful, so after I discovered a cool lamp making kit online, I made a lamp out of it…which then created a need for a one-of-a-kind lampshade to go with it!  

There’s a fresh produce store about 20 minutes from our house, and they sell soft drinks in glass bottles.  Right next to the fridge where the bottles are stored is a wall-mounted bottle opener with a jar under it to catch the lids.  The store just tosses the lids when the jar gets full, so I started collecting them every time I went to that store this summer to buy fresh strawberries.  Over a period of about 5 months, I collected what seemed like enough to complete this project…and it turned out that I collected the exact right number – plus one extra!  Couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried. 

Supplies to make a lamp from an old Coke bottle and caps:

  • Bottle caps (the number required will depend on the size of your lampshade; I used somewhere around 50)
  • Empty Coke bottle
  • Lamp kit (I bought mine off of Amazon, but you can find them at craft stores, too)
  • Wire (I used thin, pliable wire)
  • Hook nose jewelry pliers
  • Scissors (to cut fabric off of lampshade), wire cutters (to cut the wire)
  • Lampshade
  • Hammer
  • Awl

How to make a lamp from an old Coke bottle and caps

I began by hammering 4 holes along the edge of each bottle cap with the awl – top, bottom, left, and right sides.
 

If I had a hammer…

I set aside my pile of hole-y caps to cut the fabric cover off of the lampshade, leaving only the metal frame.  I hated this step since this was a new frame I bought because I got impatient looking for one the right size at Goodwill. 

 


Next, I weaved the wire through the holes in the caps, twisting it around the lamp shade frame when necessary to secure the caps to the frame.  I watched a movie while I did this, so even though it was a pretty quick process…I probably could have done it faster with my undivided attention. 🙂 

Before I tied down all the excess wire.
Note the one extra bottle cap!

At that point, all that was left to do was tuck in the excess wire and add my new lampshade onto my existing lamp…and, tah-dah!!  It’s a brand-new, one-of-a-kind bottle cap lampshade!


Time:  2-4 hours
Cost:  Under $10 (lamp kit-$7, bottle-free, lids-free, wire-leftover)