When life gives you lemons, sometimes they are awful and you have to throw them away.
This is a story about one of those "craft fails." It was way more involved than making cupcakes that don't look like Martha Stewart's, and therefore, way more heartbreaking. Once upon a time, about 4 years ago, George thought it would be a wonderful idea to collect beer caps. After all, beer is great, the logos are cool, and there are thousands of craft projects you can do with caps. Right? Well - no. There's the classic bottle cap tabletop. There are bottle cap magnets and jewelry pendants. Coasters and trays. Picture and mirror frame decorations. Wind chimes that don't chime. There's really not that much stuff, actually. But as the "creative" half of team L&G, it was sort of my job to make it happen. It was a job I should have had the foresight to quit before I started.
We took great pride in protecting each cap from dents or scratches, and allowed only one of each kind into the collection. Caps like "Bud Light Lime" didn't make the cut simply because they weren't honorable. Naturally with such a nice assortment, I wanted to encase the caps in resin to protect them. I didn't want something as big and cumbersome as another table, and there were too many caps for a set of coasters. That only left trays. Trays are nice because they come with a built in rim to hold the resin, and you can put them away when you're tired of looking at bottle caps. It was a reasonable decision, despite the lack of creativity. The next step was to make the project a little more personal. As we've been called "L&G" ever since the day my mom threw us an "L&G party" and pronounced us man and wife (that really happened), I decided to make an "L" tray and a "G" tray, and purchase a little ampersand bottle opener to tie the two together ($7).
Meanwhile, I bought 2 black rectangular trays ($7 + $15 + $15) and 32 ounces of Castin' Craft Polyester Resin ($7 + $15 + $15 +$30). How exciting - our first resin project. When the trays came, I noticed that the handles were less than a quarter inch from the bottom of the tray. Since the height of a bottle cap is about a quarter inch, these trays wouldn't hold enough resin to encase the caps, so I returned them ($7 + $30). I also started making posts in a resin forum to get more advice on the whole project. It's not like I wanted this to become some sort of failure or something.
For the second round of trays, I ordered 2 16-inch circular fiberglass trays ($7 + $30 + $15 + $15), this time in brown. Meanwhile, I heard back from the resin forum and realized it was necessary to order 2 16-ounce packages of of Envirotex Lite High Gloss Resin ($7 + $30 + $15 + $15 + $25 + $25). This kind of resin didn't need to be sanded or buffed, unlike Castin' Craft Polyester Resin. But Castin' Craft Polyester Resin couldn't be returned because it was "too flammable to be put in the mail." I bought 144 black bottle caps for the letters ($7 + $30 + $15 + $15 + $25 + $25 + $8). This was our first draft.
The trays came, and our collection wasn't big enough. We bought 45 new beers ($7 + $30 + $15 + $15 + $25 + $25 + $8 + $80). The design looked a lot cleaner with a solid border, so we delved into our personal stash of caps from Austin Homebrew. At this point, I realized that circular caps fit together into hexagons, and circular trays are anything but hexagons. Rectangles are a little bit like hexagons, but not circles. I agonized over how to deal with the circles-minus-hexagons space. Then there was the issue that the black lettering blended into the brown background. We switched to white letters. The white logo caps blended into the white letters. We threw out 20 white bottle caps and I changed the color of the L to orange. But the letters still didn't look right.
An "L" is built with lines, whereas a "G" is built with arcs. It eventually dawned on me that we could not treat both letters in the same way. The solution was to build the "L" into a hexagon inscribed in a nearly circular border, but build the "G" with concentric circles, evenly distributing the circles-minus-hexagons space. Duh.
At last, we were ready to go. We sorted and traded caps for a while, mixed the Castin' Craft Polyester Resin, and used syringes to fill the back of each cap. This was necessary to avoid air bubbles during the final curing process. The house was full of fumes for 4 days, but other than that, this part went pretty well.
We flipped them over and glued them down. After 4 years, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
Then came Wednesday, the 16th of April. It was time to pour the Envirotex Lite. We had set up a dust free zone in the gym and borrowed a hot air crafting gun to zap bubbles during the cure. One coat of Envirotex Lite "equals 50 coats of varnish," but you're supposed to pour only 1/8 of an inch at a time. This meant we needed two coats to cover the caps. We had done the calculations. We had the right amount of resin. What could go wrong?
Well, a lot. For one, the container we had saved to mix the resin was a little small, so we probably didn't mix the catalyst thoroughly enough. Also, we should have done something magical and tedious, like syringing resin into each and every crack between the bottle caps with no spills. But we didn't do that; we poured the resin from a container, much like the way a human being would typically pour resin. Then, to our utmost horror, the resin didn't flow into the crevices at all. This left us no option but to pour an additional layer to flood the caps. "Maybe it would work."
A few air bubbles came up. We zapped them with the hot air gun, and things still looked pretty good. After 25 minutes of zapping bubbles that appeared from nowhere, we were still hopeful. But then bubbles didn't stop. The hours came and went. Every time we checked on the trays, more bubbles needed zapping. We cancelled grocery shopping. We cancelled going to the gym. We cancelled our plans to see the Mozart Requiem Undead that evening. We zapped bubbles all day, for we had worked too hard to let one day ruin our entire project.
Suddenly, one spot on the "G" tray cured hard, trapping several unsightly bubbles and blemishing an otherwise smooth and glossy surface. The "G" tray was officially ruined, and we didn't want to take too many chances with the "L." We were helpless. In desperation, we ordered another 16 ounces of Envirotex Lite, since another layer could at least smooth out the top surface ($7 + $30 + $15 + $15 + $25 + $25 + $8 + $80 + $25).
By the next day, the "L" tray had acquired several large bubbles and the "G" tray remained sticky. As the days passed, the "G" tray proved incapable of a complete curing. Both trays almost looked good. But sometimes, "almost good" is still "very bad," and this was one of those times. The last container of Envirotex Lite came in the mail yesterday, but we have since grown so loathsome of the very bad trays that we'd rather save the resin for another future craft fail. We'll throw these trays away tomorrow. And so the nightmare continues.
And just so you know, $7 + $30 + $15 + $15 + $25 + $25 + $8 + $80 + $25 = $230, including the price of 45 beers of which 40 were just okay.
And before you question my judgement, these really do look a lot worse in real life than in the photos.
And who wants trays anyway? Trays, especially heavy trays filled with resin, are totally impractical and useless. This being a failure has saved us from having to own trays. We now have one new bottle cap (it was pretty?) and 16 ounces of resin. And a stupid ampersand bottle opener.
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