There's a Dragon in the Garden

Towards the end of the summer I donated my time and expertise to creating a new bottle cap mural for a local elementary school. This past school year the students, staff, and families all participated in the building of a school garden and outdoor classroom.

The timing never seemed to work for me when they were designing the space, building garden beds, etc. but I love to garden and wanted to contribute. So I decided that I would create a bottle cap mural for the school garden. Since 2012 was the first year of the school garden project, the year of the dragon, and since the mascot of the elementary school is a dragon, I decided to create a mural with the theme “A Dragon in the Garden.” It sounds a bit like a wonderful art teacher blog I know of, but it's just coincidence. Hi Phyl!

These projects are so wonderful and accomplish many goals for a school community, including beautification and school spirit, a lesson in recycling (bottle caps can not be recycled, but can be re-used for this purpose), and participating a large-scale community artwork. The families and children who participated brought me great joy, and were such a help! The principal was impressed and plans to install the mural soon on one of the outside building walls of the garden. They may even put it on display at the Board of Ed offices before it is permanently placed. I hope it will make the garden an even more beautiful space, and that the kids can point and say "I helped make that!"

Here is the finished mural. It is 4'x8' and used over 1,900 bottle caps. 

Transferring the design. 

Literally, in the middle of sorting.

The painting begins.

Beginning to install the caps, working from the middle out.

Capping the dragon's wing.

A parent and student working with the screwdriver drill.

Adding the finishing touches.