Bottle Cap Table

My most talked about, and asked about project was the bottle cap table I made for my husbands 30th birthday.

For years our house has been the "gathering place" and we have collected HUNDREDS of bottle caps. I am not sure exactly when or how this collection started, but last summer we had BUCKETS of caps. My husband kept mentioning how he wanted to do something with them, so what better to do than make a table.

I started by locating a table first. We found our table at Lowe's ( table link ). I believe our table is about 8ft long and a little over 2ft wide. Once I had the table I then started laying out caps for a design. This part took at least a month. YES I had a table in my living room with bottle caps laying on it for over a month.

Once I figured out a layout for the caps I put my friends and family to use....I sent them out to drink certain types of drinks ONLY FOR THE CAPS. You can imagine how they really dreaded helping...NOT. 

I chose to group caps together to make a pattern, you could do them all random...but that wasn't complicated enough for me.

And my friends continued drinking....until the table was covered.

Then comes the fun part. Ok, this is where I am not even going to lie and say I enjoyed making this table. Each cap had to be glued down to the table. All 2,000+ caps had to be glued down. I used a hot glue gun from the shop, it was heavy duty and made the work a little easier. You can use a regular glue gun. (FYI liquid nails was a big mess...don't try that)

After the caps are glued down you are ready to pour the resin. I purchased the resin HERE,  my table took seven gallons. This part is really tricky and messy. First you need a plastic container (old coffee tub worked best) and a metal spoon you don't care anything about...you will not get it back. You mix one part epoxy and one part hardener in the plastic and stir with the spoon. Simple right? WRONG...don't stir too fast or it bubbles, don't use wood or it turns yellow, oh and don't let it touch anything else. It is a horribly sticky mess. Imagine the stuff that used to be in stretch arm strong...yes..that is how gross this stuff is.

So you pour the resin on one cup at a time. It runs every where and will ruin anything it touches. So lesson learned....pour it OUTSIDE on plastic drop clothes.

We tried aluminum foil barriers to keep it damned up, that didn't work. We ended up having to grind the foil off. Once the resin is on you will see air bubbles in it, you then have to take a blow torch and use the heat to pop the bubbles. Make sure you keep that about 6 inches away from the resin.

After seven gallons of resin, two ruined spoons, a ruined measuring cup (or six), a ruined pair of shoes....we have one AWESOME table.

Here is a photo of how the foil stuck to the side...before we had to grind it off. We ended up adding a metal boarder to hide the mess from the foil.

Between the bottle caps I hid small items that are sentimental to us. Bullets from the first time I shot my gun, Danny's grandfathers police pin, a pink ribbon for my grandmother (who is a survivor), and Bryson stuck a small spiderman in there...and MANY other things!

If you have any questions please feel free to ask. Since I wasn't blogging at the time I made the table I did not take step by step photos. And the photos in this post are all from my iPhone...so they are poor quality.