I love fridge magnets. We love fridge magnets (my wife likes them too). This is how our fridge looks like:
But we also love beer. And we have a large collection of beer bottle caps and coasters. So I thought to combine these and make the caps stick to the refrigerator. Now, what you need for this is a hot glue gun, glue rods (many!) and self–adhesive magnetic ribbon. This can be easily trimmed with a scissor to fit the size of a bottle cap.
Heat the glue gun until the glue is almost liquid. This is important because, if it is too viscous, it will not level properly. Place the caps on a flat, horizontal surface. Fill them with hot glue. Have patience. Do it slowly, layer by layer, with liquid hot glue. And, for God’s sake, don’t touch it ! It is scorching hot. For a normal size bottle cap, four pumps of glue will fill it completely, with a small bevel that will help sticking the magnetic ribbon.
The secret here is to have patience and wait for the plastic bar to melt enough to pour a liquid media, not to viscous. Otherwise it will not level properly. For a 1/2″ bar, four pumps will fill a beer cap.
Place all filled caps on a level, cool surface and let them cool down for thirty minutes. The hot glue will first lose transparency, then will get opaque as it cools down:
Lined up and filled with hot glue. As the glue cools, it becomes translucent, then opaque. Caps on left have cooled. Notice the transparence of the glue in the bottom right cap. It was just poured.
After 30 minutes, cut small magnet rectangles from the magnetic ribbon and stick them on the back of the caps:
The bulge on the back might create difficulties when sticking the magnets. Sometimes I used a bit of super glue to properly attach the magnets.
The end result is shown in the picture to the left. One problem we face now is the shortage of metallic surfaces that we could stick the collection of >300 beer caps (and not only). When I am contemplating this, I think only about two things: The amount of beer we consumed over past years and the stupid–funny–little pleasures we might find sometimes in the most unexpected objects. The problem is that, enjoying the new look of our kitchen, I began collecting all sorts of caps, including pulloffs (see below), threaded and any metal cap that looks nice and could make it to one of the few places available on our fridge or the kitchen hood.
Anyway, the place looks nicer, much more colourful and with a touch of schizophrenic personality. Which is not bad. It is certainly an attraction for our guests. 🙂
A Tubor Christmas pull–off cap. By the way, starting November we should have this again in shops. Hardly can wait. I like this beer. Anyway, I managed to create some magnets out of this snap–offs too. They look great on our kitchen hood.
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