You know those little metal figure 8 things that help open your favorite can of soda pop? You can do some pretty amazing things with can tabs! Take one look on Pinterest for can tab art and it will blow your mind. But one problem with collecting these…WE DON’T DRINK SODA! Thankfully, just when I thought all hope was lost for trying a can tab upcycle, I found a bag of them at our reuse it shop.
Can tabs are shiny and simple enough as a building material. I’ve also always wanted a chandelier, however looking at the price tags of those big, sparkly ones made the decision easy to make one from can tabs instead!
Watch the process in this video:
This is what I used:
- Wood embroidery hoops
- Jump Rings (6 or 8 mm)
- Silver acrylic paint
- Can tabs (This project took nearly 1,000 tabs alone- so save plenty!)
- Small screws
- Hot glue (only a small amount to keep some of the tabs in place during assembly)
- Silver string lights
- Metal wire (to hold battery pack in place)
- Jewelry pliers
Most all of these things can be found at Walmart or your local craft store.
This project wasn’t necessarily difficult but definitely more time consuming than I anticipated. It took about 2 weeks alone to make enough chains. Before connecting the tabs with the rings you need to use pliers to bend back the thick end of the tab, like this:
Then you can use the jump rings (small metal rings usually used in jewelry making) to connect as many tabs on a chain as you need. I went through about 5 packs of 6/8mm jump rings and averaged about 10-20 tabs per chain.
Once enough chains were made I painted each embroidery hoop (just the inside hoops) with the silver acrylic paint. For a chandelier you want a couple different size hoops. I thought I would use three but only ended up using two!
Then I took small screws and evenly distributed them around the outside and inside of each hoop.
This gave something for the chains to easily hang from, however I did have to use hot glue in the beginning to hold them in place until I had enough to balance out the weight.
In the collection of tabs I noticed there were also a few larger sizes. Most chandeliers have candles around the outside rings so these became my “candles” instead!
Even with fake candles you need light. The lights couldn’t be heavy so I bought a strand of silver string lights and strung them around the inside edge of the large hoop.
The battery pack I also painted silver and hid it inside the small top hoop. By using a little metal wire I created a “nest” for the battery pack to sit on and wove the cord down one of the connecting chains.
The end result? I have my chandelier!
Underneath:
Close up:
If you try this at home I just suggest plenty of patience (and hopefully soda loving friends to help you collect the tabs!) The result is well worth it in the end! Happy creating! 🙂