Ideas for Displaying Your Collection of Beer Coasters...

Beer coasters, also called beer mats, are fun to collect (if you're a packrat like me!), but what do you do with all these momentos of beer you've drank and places you've been? After my drawer o' coasters started overflowing, I looked for creative ways to display my cool coasters from unique places. Here I'll share some different ways to display your collection.

Things You’ll Need:

• Coasters
• Picture frames (one or more large ones, or many small ones).
• Nails or thumbtacks
• Magnets
• Creativity
• An area where you'd like to show off your collection.

The most important thing to consider is, do you really have a room or place in your house that you'd like to display your collection? Game rooms or garages can be excellent places to do this. It can add a fun, "pub" type theme to an area of your house, but chances are you might not want it in the most public areas of your house (unless you're in college).

Once you've determined what kind of space you have available, as well as the amount of coasters you're working with, you'll want to decide how to display them. Depending on how much money you want to spend on this project, I'll cover in the next few steps, different ways to display your coasters from cheapest to most expensive.

 The first option, also the cheapest, is to go buy some magnets at a craft store, and start affixing them to the back of your coasters. If you have a kegerator in your garage, having your coasters as magnets is a really cool way to decorate your beer dispensing device. Also, if you've made your kegerator yourself, most likely you've used a beat-up old fridge, so this is a great way to clean up the look of it as well.

 The next option, the one that I use, is framing the most unique coasters individually. I happened to have one wall of pegboard in my house already, so I came up with the theme in the picture, which was to put the coaster in a frame and display it on the pegboard, as illustrated in the picture. I bought all of my frames at a dollar store, so this was not much of an investment and came out looking pretty cool. I get a lot of compliments on my Wall O' Coasters!

The third and most expensive option is to buy a very large frame and build a collage of coasters on a sturdy piece of mat board. You can overlap the coasters or just display them side by side, although the second option can be difficult with varying sizes of coasters. You may decide to buy many large frames if you have a big collection, or you may narrow it down to only displaying the most interesting or favorite coasters - perhaps by places you've visited, microbreweries only, beers of a certain country, etc. Be creative and have fun! I've covered only a few of the many options, the possibilities are endles!

  Now that you're finished, hang your coaster collection in the area you chose, and enjoy the (unique) view!