Recycle your bottle caps and turn them into wall art! See the step by step photos and tips to create a bottle cab crab to hang in your home!

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A few years back, the brewery my parents co-own changed over from bottling to canning their beer and in doing so the 1000s of bottle caps they had were no longer of use.
They gave me a box of 10,000 and I’m slowly using them to create all sorts of goodies, including these bottle cap ornaments that were for sale at the brewery. This Mother’s Day my mom requested a recreation of a bottle cap crab she once saw at a craft fair but using their bottle caps.

Bottle Cap Crab Wall Art Supplies:
- Wood
- Stain
- 73 Bottle Caps (20 squished in half, 4 slightly bent and the rest straight)
- Hot Glue Gun and extra glue sticks
- Flat nose plyers
- Black acrylic paint and paintbrush (optional)

To create your bottle cap crab, first prep your board by sanding and staining to your desired look. This board is approximately 14″ wide by 13″ tall.
The bottom layer of the crab’s bottle is made with 5 rows, with the following arrangement from top to bottom: 3, 4, 5, 4, 3. Use hot glue around the rim of the bottom cap to secure onto your board.

Next layer 4 rows on top with the following arrangement: 4,5,4,3.

To create the 8 legs of the crab, fold 16 bottle caps in half using your plyers. Glue onto the wood board in the layout shown.

The claw of the crab is created in two layers. The first, shown on the left is made of 4 bottle caps and two that are squished in half. Then, as you can see on the right side, Layer 3 more flat bottle caps on top and finish with 2 at the top of the claw that are just slightly bent.

Once the hot glue dried, I noticed you could see a lot of the glue blobs. Since my bottle caps are solid black, I decided to paint over the exposed glue with black acrylic paint which really hid them.

This bottle cab crab will likely be hung in my parents home near the state string art designs I gifted them for Christmas.

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