DIY: Bottle Cap Tray

I have wonderful dreams of being this wonderful crafty mom blogger extrodinare. Only my craft supplies go largely neglected. Every so often I get my butt in gear and actually follow through. The LEGO table I made for Bear around Easter time was my last completed project.

 

This week I finally finished what may be my favorite crafty piece to date. I made a bottle cap tray.

What I mean about having things just laying around for a long time is this tray. And the bottle caps. I began saving the beer bottle caps since we moved into our home last October. In January I happened across this beautiful tray at a yard sale that was meant for a cross-stitch or embroidery piece. The tray had two inner pieces, one to mount the embroidery or cross stitch to and one to frame the work. A third glass piece was missing. Hence, why it was at the yard sale. I knew instantly that it was perfect for my bottle caps I had been . My next step was to see if I had enough bottle caps. I did not so Husband and I got to working on that.

Over the next few months I researched the best way to accomplish what I was going for. I finally decided that resin would achieve the look I wanted.  I used EnviroTex Lite Pour-On High Gloss Finish. I also used this YouTube video. There are many videos and blogs to reference, but this seemed the most straight forward.  Work smarter, not harder!

I really think that if I wanted to do a whole counter/bar top in the bottle caps I would have to throw a party or find a bartender that wouldn’t mind saving caps. I must have the worst case of resting bitch face because the few times I went out I asked the bartender if they could save a few for me they straight up said no. Oh well, I guess they were honest.

I needed to paint the bottom of the tray. As the bottom piece of the tray I was using was intended to be the backing to fabric It was never meant to be seen and definitely wouldn’t have looked nice or match the wood of the sides of the tray itself. So I went with some purple spray paint I had lying about.

I did a 3oz to 3oz for resin mix for the glue down stage. I used an index card to ensure that the resin made it to the edges of the inner piece. Once the resin was spread evenly I got to placing the caps onto it! This was the most fun of the whole project. I’m lucky Husband likes many different kinds of beers because I got to have a truly unique piece with no duplicate caps in each row until I go to the last row which ended up being only my cider caps.

The next day I had to do the flood layer of resin. This is where I messed up…. I thought that coat of resin the day before had sealed the inner bottom of the tray had sealed it together and that it was watertight now. It was NOT. Resin started pouring out of one corner of the tray and there was not much I could do about it at that point. I finagled a plastic bag into the corner to stave the worst of the resin from escaping and there was a lot of scraping the workspace to save as much as possible. It worked to an extent, but I was just shy of having total submersion. I’ll know for the next time I do this. I also now understand the importance of having a little more than what you need. I had exactly enough for no mishaps. Ugh.

But all and all I am happy with how my tray came out. It looks so freaking cool. I want to make more! I mayyyy put one more coat of resin to level out the top because of the mishap….