My husband (programmer) and I (designer/tinkerer) were on the hunt for a project that would engage both of our skill sets. We had talked before about collaborations that would be fun for each of us and then slowly this one found us.



As we'd drink different favorite beers, we'd usually get a six-pack or a few from a specific brewery at a time and my husband started to make patterns on the kitchen table out of the first dozen caps. With mostly the same few colors, alternating red-blue-red-blue-etc. around a table centerpiece or in some grid was about as complicated as it got. As the number of bottle caps grew over time, we'd sit and share a beer while talking and making patterns when this idea hit us: what if we made mosaics out of the caps?

Making mosaic art out of bottle caps isn't our idea and there are many inspiring artists we've seen in the past few years that we've been collecting bottle caps (turns out mosaics require a TON of bottle caps, but more on that later).



The idea took many forms. Originally, I had wanted to make a Connect Four style frame and hang it in our kitchen (another day - I still think this could be tons of fun) or PLINKO style to create an image out of the caps. Eventually we landed on this incarnation where we can input any image and this program processes the image to show the types and number of bottles of beer you'd need to drink to create that mosaic. There's still a lot we want to do to create a mosaic, but for those who share a love of beer and art, this Instructable will serve to get you started on making your own mosaic!