Tutorial Beer Bottle Opener

Hey there :)

This year I designed a beer bottle opener for father's day and I wanted to share the progress with you :) Of course you can also make one for your mum, or anyone else who likes drinks with a bottle cap. I used a cheap bottle opener I already had and covered that one. If you have a plain one, you can of course use that and make a solid clay handle. Of course you can also make a handle for a wine bottle opener or any other handle :)

Materials:
plain, old or ugly beer bottle opener
polymer clay
blade or xacto knife
roller or pasta machine
(scissors)
clay shaping tools
sand paper

letter stamps

(decorative stamps)

metallic powder, paint or eyeshadow

Instructions:

First check if the handle of the bottle opener you're using is oven safe. You do that by simply testing it. Put it in your oven and bake it as you would bake your clay. If it doesn't melt, congratulations: you can use it. I've made the experience that most plastics are bakeable if they're not too thin. But try it first. Of course if it's wood, metal or glass or something, you don't have to worry.

Now check if the piece you want to cover has any bumps and shapes you don't like. If it does, you can try cutting them off. I'm talking about things like the handle of the beer pot I'm using. If you can't cut it, you'll need to even it out by for example putting more clay into the low spots. Or just use the bumps to your advantage and create an uneven piece :)

Now roll out a thick sheet of scrap clay and wrap it around your piece. This is to create an even surface. If it's already very even, you can skip this process.

Tutorial Beer Bottle Opener

Smooth it all out and cut away any excess. Roll it on your work surface if you want, to make it smoother.

Tutorial Beer Bottle Opener

Now I covered mine in 'nice' clay. I chose black. For that roll out a thin sheet of your desired colour, cut one side straight and tightly wrap it around your piece. If it's a round shape like mine, be sure to start pressing down in the middle and then pushing the clay to the sides to avoid air bubbles. Push it very carefully and tightly to get a smooth surface.

Tutorial Beer Bottle Opener

Push it and smooth it down all the way to the end until you have all the excess at the end. Check the picture below. Then cut away then excess. You can use small scissors for that (look at my cute golden scissors in the background :)

Tutorial Beer Bottle Opener

Then use a tool to smooth out the bottom. Preferrably use a metal tool for this to really smooth it out. You can also use a silicone one. Try to remove all the seams. I found out that you can smooth out seams really well if you use a little bit of liquid clay. Or try water if you don't have any, but not too much.

Tutorial Beer Bottle Opener

Now to add some great texture, I recently seem to always use sandpaper. Simply roll it on the sandpaper. It's best to take two pieces of sandpaper, one for underneath and one on top, and then just roll your piece in between.

You can also texture with a toothbrush or anything similar but I always find this sort of tedious... Too lazy :D

Then onto the stamping. Choose your alphabet stamps to stamp the name of your loved one and if you want and you have enough space, you can also stamp a little design underneath. I got both of my sets from AliExpress. One is an alphabet set and one a bird set. 

You can either stamp directly on your handle or stamp on a textured clay sheet and then cut it out and place it on your piece. I first stamped directly but because of the curve, the indents were not really even. That's why I stamped it again onto a sheet, cut it out and put it on my handle. This way, it's also not as bad if you mess up as you can justtry again.

Tutorial Beer Bottle Opener

If you have cut out your designs and placed them on, you will have a boarder. You don't have to worry about it and smooth it out but use it to your advantage and take a small dotting tool (or toothpick or something) and make dots all around the boarder in a line. This way we have a very pretty design, which will look like rivets or small nails once you add your metal powder :)

You can see the metal powder in the background already, I store my gold and copper in glass jars.

Take your favourite metal powder or eye shadow, dip your finger into it, tap your finger onto your work surface to shake off the excess and then carefully stroke your finger over the surface of your clay. The powder will stick to the raw clay.

Tutorial Beer Bottle Opener

I used both the gold and the copper to give it even more interest. The texture we created with sandpaper and the faux rivets give it an almost steampunk look. 

Don't forget to stamp your homemade signature stamp into the bottom, so people always remember where it came from ;)

Here it is all done: 

Tutorial Beer Bottle Opener

I'm really excited to see the reactions on father's day :)

So what do you think? Do you like this project? Are you gonna make one? Hope to hear from you in the comments :)

See you soon