When you look at bottle caps what do you see? Mike Valle sees the potential for art. We think his bottle cap portraits are awesome! His upcycling takes a material that most people consider trash, and transforms it into a colourful art medium.

These bottle cap portraits are the work of Mike Valle of Greensboro, North Carolina. Mike started saving bottle caps when he was in college. He was drawn to their bright colours and designs. Mike noticed how quickly bottle caps accumulated. While he didn’t know at the time what he was saving them for, he knew that he would be able to do something with them. About 5 years ago, he started creating bottle cap portraits.

To create his bottle cap portraits, Mike starts by picking an image. He is drawn to famous paintings and iconic photos. From there, he figures out a colour scheme and lays out his design on paper with markers. Once he’s developed the design, he lays out the bottle caps. When he’s happy with how that looks, he’ll glue the caps down.

Mike gets his bottle caps from friends and family across the country. He also collects a lot from local restaurants and bars that save them for him.

Mike’s advice for aspiring upcyclers is to find a material you like to work with and make something unique.

There are a lot of everyday materials that people throw away that have the potential to be upcycled into something beautiful.

With his bottle cap art, Mike likes creating different portraits. One of his favourites to create was Frankenstein. He feels that the bottle cap art was a good portrayal of the character.

We think that Mike’s bottle cap portraits are great. It’s a super fun way to upcycle something otherwise thrown away and we love the finished outcome. We might just have to try making some of our own..

Source: ReCaps by Mike Valle