Beer Cap Tray

I saw a foot stool once years ago that had beer caps hammered into the top and fell in love with the idea.   I never got around to making it... but I'm not giving up on that idea yet.  But I started with something a bit different instead.  I found this old tea tray at a thrift store and originally was going to cover the bottom with wine corks.  Then I inherited some of my dad's old beer steins and decided to make a centerpiece out of it.

I played around with the layout a lot.

Did some random patterns.  But decided I wanted to be a bit more creative...

First few attempts didn't really work the way I wanted though.

I tried a few different patterns.

I admit I'm picky and stubborn.

But I did eventually decide on one that I liked. It's subtle, but spectacular once I had it up on the shelf.

So here's the thing.  The pattern was probably the hardest point.  Once I had the pattern all set, I covered it with a two part epoxy just like I did with the penny table.  This one was a lot more work though after I poured the epoxy... hindsight being 20/20... take my advice and find a way to secure the caps to the base before you pour on the epoxy.  What hadn't occurred to me before hand is that each of those little caps holds air, so once the epoxy was poured... they wanted to float.  The Main Man and I sat for probably an hour with a pair of chopsticks pushing each cap down and trying to get all the air out as the epoxy cured.  What a pain.  I only used one box of the two part epoxy for this, I've let it be because at the moment this is a decorative piece, but it wasn't quite enough to completely cover all the caps.  That could be partly because of the floating cap problem though.  I'd probably add another layer if this ever gets to the point where I want to use it regularly.  Worth it in the end but I'll do things differently next time.