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.

Most Fascinating Blog Nomination

Voting begins this week at Accelerated Degree for some of the most fascinating art teacher blogs of the past year. I am fortunate enough to be included among the nominated for one of my posts featuring the bottle cap mural that students and I created last summer! It must be fate, because I just offered to create another mural this summer for our local elementary school.

Now the tricky part. To vote you must have a Google+ account.  If you have one, all you need to do is visit the link, and look for the second post down with the picture of a girl at an easel. The "My Adventures..." blog is listed in the comments. Add a +1 there, and your vote is cast. 

If you don't have an account, but are willing to join and cast a vote for little old me, visit Google and select the +Google tab along the bottom menu. Thanks for voting, and good luck to all of my fellow art teacher bloggers!

Our Finished Mural

Our bottle cap mural is finally complete! Over 1,200 caps make up this rendition of Picasso's The Dreamer. Thanks to all of the children who helped create it. Oh, and we're still collecting.

Our Bottle Cap Mural in Progress!

Well summer is here and my students have been donating bottle caps like crazy! Off we go on our first bottle cap adventure. You can see more photos on our Facebook page. More mural posts and progress to come...

The Bottle Cap Drive is On!

I've started a plastic bottle cap drive for my art studio! I'm taking the plunge and coordinating some mural projects with the kids for our spring and summer workshops. Then I hope to propose a mural project to donate to a local venue.

Does anyone have any learning experiences or advice on a smoothly run operation? Any construction troubles? I'd love to hear from you! Here's an inspirational link if you are not familiar with these amazing projects. Visit: http://www.artgrange.com/LittleBottlecap.html