bottle cap magnets | The Ginger Penny Pincher

Curiously, one of the things that brings the most traffic to my blog are Pins and links to the beer cap magnets I made back in December.

Curious because these were just something I threw together, literally with what I had laying around… plus a few glue sticks and a roll of magnetic tape. And since the non-tutorial is just sort of grouped together with a post about a bunch of other things I made as Christmas presents, I thought it was high time I devoted a post to just the beer cap magnets.

To call it a tutorial would be silly, because they’re so easy to make and require no skill/creativity, but… yeah, this is a tutorial.

You’ll need:

Beer caps (or soda bottle caps or whatever)
Magnets (I recommend the magnetic tape rolls)
Hot glue gun
Glue sticks
Washer or cork or some kind of spacer

Take the beer cap — which you undoubtedly obtained by giving it the ol’ college try — and glue the spacer to the bottom in the hollow of the beer cap. Metal washers are great for this, but I actually used old wine corks for mine (in keeping with the libations theme).

I took each wine cork and cut it into small slices using a serrated kitchen knife. Each cork yielded about three spacers. And like the beer caps, they were free!

Then I took a small strip of magnetic tape — small, because the beer caps weigh nothing — and even though it’s tape, I put a dot of hot glue on the cork before pressing on the magnet. That’s it!

The beer caps and cork were free, the pack of hot glue sticks was a whopping dollar (and I only used two to make a dozen), and the roll o magnetic tape was about four bucks (and I only used about one fourth of it). That’s pretty darn penny-pinchery, if I do say so myself.

And he’s the finished product!

There. All myths dispelled. These things really are just that simple.

Nudge. Nudge. Hey — if you’ve Pinned this before, do ya mind re-Pinning it? Then people will be directed to this helpful little post…. and I won’t get so many emails about how to make them and “are they really just beer caps and magnets?” and compliments about how cute my dogs are. April Fool’s. Keep the e-mails coming… Especially if they’re complimentary ones about my babies.

See you tomorrow — we finnin’ to paint some spoons up in here!

~~Holla!~~ Bye!

So, I said I wouldn’t return to the regularly scheduled blogging for another two weeks (holidays are hard!), but I did want to do a little show-and-tell with some of the gifts I gave this year, particularly the handmade ones.

Oooohhhh………..

As you may remember, Josh and I made the (ambitious) commitment to making all of our Christmas gifts for family by hand. We knew this would help us save money and create truly personalized gifts, but we also wanted to see if we were up to challenge! You have already seen some of the gifts (via previous blog post), but I’m going to show them again anyway. Because I can.

Here we go:

For my mother, I took a song that reminds us of each other (“You Are My Sunshine”), printed it out (it turned out to be three pages) and framed it in three black Ikea frames. And then I proceeded to wrap it up, ship it off, and not take a darn picture.

(Insert tear-jerking picture here)

Oh well…

For my mother-in-law, I gave the beloved linen spray:

You remember that stuff I made here? I gave it to her as a Christmas gift (along with a host of other bath/good smelling/candles-girly things). I think this stuff is fun for any occasion, and definitely a great alternative to Febreze… or other sprays with ingredients that are more than five syllables long.

For my orange-wearin’, University of Tennessee supporting father, I gave him the string nail art of the state of Tennessee (check out the tutorial here).

After the warm fuzzies of successfully completing a crafty venture set in, I decided to do the same for my Georgia-born brother-in-law, this time making Atlanta the heart and point from which all of the strings “radiated.” Not the winning-est pics, but that’s because I only remembered at the last minute that I should snap a few before giving it away.

Instead of buying a $10 pre-cut piece of wood from Michael’s like the last time, I decided to go with a wooden cutting board from the local dollar store (it wasn’t Dollar Tree, so the board was actually $3.99). Then I sprayed it with a wood stain and painted the sides lime green (my fave detail).

The wooden cutting board came with its own hanger, and I let it remain, in hopes that my “utilitarian” brother-in-law will hang it on the walls of his spartan apartment (fingers crossed).

For my brother, we made a set of Scrabble magnets (heart-warming story found here… well, mildly heart-warming).

For Josh’s dad (my father-in-law), we decided to take advantage of a slightly long-term endeavor of mine. Being a big fan of beer and an even bigger fan of preserving our planet, I have held onto to nearly all bottle caps whose removal I have been responsible for over the last year. Other members of my family have been helpful in this endeavor as well (I didn’t really have to twist their arms). At the time, I didn’t have a clear plan for said bottle caps, but I knew I would figure something out (I even have a Pinterest board devoted exclusively to this interest: check it out).

Well, I gave it the ol’ college try, and I came up with a fun art project:

I took a Ben Franklin quote (since then, I have learned that he may have not actually said this quote, but whatever), printed it off on regular printer paper, made a matte of hot-glue-gunned beer caps and stuck it in a shadow box (thanks again, Ikea).

In keeping with the beer cap theme, I decided to make some beer cap magnets for my sister-in-law’s boyfriend (who also came to visit us in NYC). Then I liked them so much, I almost kept them… but Josh said no. “Oooookkaaaayyy, Jooosh…”

I took the beer caps and attached a small magnet with hot glue, but not before I added a spacer to fill the cavity of the beer cap. And what did I make the spacer out of??? Champagne corks! Turns out that a champagne cork fits perfectly inside a bottle cap, so after I glue the cork to the bottom of the cap, I used a serrated knife (and took my time) and sawed of the remaining part (and you’ll bet I used the rest for the other bottle caps).

See?

Two upcycling efforts in one!

For my sister-in-law’s gift, I re-used the same method from the previous post about tile coasters, but this time I used images from her favorite movie of all time, Nightmare Before Christmas (when asked whether she considers it more of a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie, she enthusiastically replies “It’s an ANYTIME movie!”).