Handmade Gift Idea: Beverage Decorations

For this handmade gift I made a mosaic mirror from some collected beer bottle caps. (I would be remiss without giving a shout out to my friend Lizzie for collecting all these beer bottle caps and saving them for me since I said I used them for mosaics. So awesome, thanks!) I have taken care to title this gift a beverage decoration and would say it is a gift for the "beer enthusiast" or "beer connoisseur". I would like to strongly point out that I am not using the phrases "heavy drinker" or anything that has negative connotations. Let's not give an insult with the gift, shall we?

Mosaics are something I have been doing for a few years and I have probably done around 20 projects. If people are interested, I can do a more thorough tutorial on mosaics later, but I will stick to the basics for this one. Here are the mosaic mirrors I made



I think they came out really cool and are a fun, eclectic decoration that showcases a variety of brews! To do this project I started out with two 12" x 12" wooden mirrors I purchased awhile ago at IKEA for only a few dollars a piece.

I played around until I found an attractive layout of my bottle caps. I used tile adhesive (found in the tile/grout section of your local hardware store. I strongly suggest using this stuff, the same stuff used to tile a floor as opposed to the more expensive/less effective craft store version) to attach my bottle caps to the mirror. Following the directions I then let this sit for at least 24 hours.

The next step was to grout my creations. I followed the directions on the package (again, buy non sanded grout in whatever color you desire from your hardware store, not the craft store) for mixing and application of the grout. After cleaning it up, I let this set overnight as well.

All that was left after this was sealing the pieces (grout and tile sealer found in the same places as the previous products) and painting the sides and back with some acrylic paint to make it pretty.






Mosaic projects are so much fun and can take some time depending on your design but are not hard to do . There are limitless designs you can imagine with this craft. In the future I will do another, more detailed post on mosaics. I will show some of my other projects, explain the process more thoroughly and refer you all to some other great references on the subject. (Probably better to do this once the weather gets warm and we can take this messy craft outside) Would that be something any of you would like to read?

Hope your holiday preparation is going well,

*Bonnybee