I can’t remember when I first saw and favorited this photo of a bottle cap wreath, posted by Elise Blaha. But ever since I saw it I’ve been wanting to try it. This past year has been a bit more of a crafting year than previous ones, so sometime around Thanksgiving, I sent out a bulletin to my family to start saving bottle caps. And then I embraced yet another excuse to buy ribbon at the craft store.

I knew my dad would know the best tricks to flattening the bottle caps, but I didn’t really envision it being a task that required as much nitpicky work as it did. I’d collected the 50 or so bottle caps I needed, and hammered them all on Tuesday night in the chilly garage at my parents’ house. Dad referred to it then as a labor of love, and boy howdy was he right. My thumb is still feeling a little funny a day later.

But dudes! Look how cool it turned out!

I cut a wreath shape out of an empty case of beer, using a bowl and a smaller bowl as the models. I also cut a smaller circle to test out, because I wasn’t positive that the hot glue would stick the bottle caps to each other and to the cardboard. It took a lot of willpower – A LOT OF IT – to arrange the bottlecaps haphazardly, as opposed to in an orderly and color-coordinated fashion. I really wanted to count them out when I sorted them into colored piles so I could evenly distribute them. But I didn’t. I swear.

To adhere the ribbon, I cut two holes in the wreath template and threaded the ribbon through before gluing on the bottlecaps. I felt like that would keep it more sturdy in the longterm. We’ll see. Either way, I’m psyched to report that this craft was totally worth the effort.

Now if only I could decide whether to ever make one of these again, knowing that my sister’s boyfriend and his family apparently have a gigantic jug of bottle caps they’ve been saving. For me.