Bottle Cap Beer Mug

Hey there!  So I'd been thinking about what I could do with my favorite bottle caps, and this idea came to me out of nowhere.  Most of what's on this blog are Pinterest copy-cat projects, but this was a Bren original idea.  I think it turned out pretty great!  (Though it is somewhat fragile.)

First I laid out the caps the way I wanted them.  I decided to use skinny popsicle sticks to make a frame I could glue them to, so I positioned the sticks on top of the caps and used a glue gun to hold them together.  (wood glue would be better, but harder to undo if you make a mistake, which I did a couple times).  The frame ended up being double-thick, so I could glue the crossing pieces to the bottom of the top layer, then fill in the gaps so it all was the same thickness.  (Hope that makes sense; pictures may explain it better:)

Then I began to glue the caps to the wood.  I made sure to place them in each other's grooves to get them as tight as possible.  The main part was easy, but the handle gave me some trouble and I squished some of the caps to make them slightly narrower until everything fit. 

I hung it up in the kitchen!  Like I said, it's a little fragile, but sturdy enough to hang on the wall just fine.  I reinforced the corner caps with some extra glue when it was all done.  Here it is!