Bottlecap Magnets Project

I started making these little guys after I saw a post inspired by Ali Edwards. These are easy peasy and also a really great way to use up some Christmas scraps.

Step one: Get some bottlecaps. I know Maya Road makes some big ones, but I just had these lying around (our Costco sells full-sugar Mexican Coke now, yum.) I did boil them in water to help clean them up a bit. If you don't like the color of the bottlecaps, you can totally paint them! How fun would teal be? Or even a pretty bright pink?
Step two: assemble your goodies. I have some scrap papers and bits of transparencies from other holiday projects that are perfect for this. For my words, I have the MM Holiday WordFetti, but you can also just use stamps or print out words on your computer for fun, custom holiday words/phrases.
Step three: get your tools out. If you don't want to hand cut everything, you may wish to grab your punches...
Step four (optional): pick a formula if you want a more "themed" look for your magnets. I chose to go with: background paper + punched accent + holiday appropriate word.

Step five: assemble. This is the fun part! Just make a simple collage that appeals to you. You can even use stamped images and tiny photos as well.

If you are not using a punch for the background circle, you can just trace around the bottlecap bottom and trim it from there.

Step six: glue the collage into the bottlecap (makes it way easier to work with). I secured them with a glue dot. If you aren't worried about "floating" or you have some heavier items on your collage, you can probably skip this step.

Step seven: pour your dimensional adhesive on top of the collage, be sure to completely cover the image and watch out for air bubbles!

Step eight: wait for the dimensional adhesive to dry. I let mine dry overnight. You will know it is dry because the epoxy will turn clear.

Step nine: glue a magnet on the back. Be sure to use a glue or epoxy that will work with metal (bonding to smooth surfaces). Superglue does not work due to the smooth surface of the bottle cap and the magnet.

So...if you don't want to turn these little guys into magnets they would make some pretty awesome embellishments on a card, page or mini-book...

And voila! All done. How fun was that? And easy too.

If you try this let me know! I would love to see what other people come up with!!!

*********

Edited: You know what would also be awesome with the above project? A magnetic Xmas Calendar... Think about it.

(originally posted in November 2007)