DIY Bottle Opener – Great Gift Idea!

For Christmas , I wanted most of my gifts to be handmade.  For the women in our family, I made these frames. But for the men, I wanted the gifts to be something practical they could use.  A lot of the men in our families are beer drinkers, so I decided I would make them a DIY bottle opener out of wood and using a bottle opener mechanism and cap catcher from Amazon.  I looked on Pinterest and Etsy for ideas, and then decided on a style I liked.  I knew I wanted some type of wording on the wood portion of the opener to give it some character, so I searched online for a stencil about beer.  I finally found one at a site called The Stencil Maker. For around $10, I purchased a stencil with the wording “Keep Calm and Drink Beer”. Here are the instructions for making this quick gift idea (they make great Father’s Day gifts too!)

DIY Bottle Opener Materials and Supplies:

Circular Saw	Beer Bottle Cap Catcher	Wall Mounted Bottle Opener
Minwax Stain, Dark Walnut	Spray Paint, White	Interior Polyurethane Water-Based Spray
Beer Stencil – Small
Keep Calm and Drink Beer Stencil

DIY Bottle Opener Wood Purchase List:

• 1×6@ 4′

DIY Bottle Opener Instructions:

Using a circular saw,  cut the 1″x 6″ board to 20.5″.

Sand the board and stain with Minwax Dark Walnut.

Once the stain has dried,  place the stencil on the board, towards the center. (Temporarily set the bottle opener at the top of the board and set the bottle cap catcher at the bottom to ensure the wording on the stencil nicely fits between the location where those two objects will be attached to the board.

Here is a picture of what the opener and catcher look like.

Once you have decided the exact location for the stencil, tape the stencil to the board, making sure there is enough room above and below the stencil for the opener and for the cap catcher. Cover any remaining exposed portions of the wood board with a rag or an old towel. I then used Rustoleum White spray paint, to LIGHTLY spray over the stencil   I did several coats of the white spray paint, spraying very lightly for each coat, as I did not want the paint to bleed under the stencil.

Once I had nice coverage of the stencil, I very carefully removed the stencil and let the paint dry.  Once the wording was dry, I screwed on the bottle opener and the bottle catcher, making sure each one was straight, with the provided screws.  On Christmas day,  the men in my family who received these as gifts absolutely LOVED them!  I made one for hubby as well, and that one is now hanging in our garage: