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.

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.

Recycled African Masks

I love giving my recycled art classes during the summer. I hoard during the school year in hopes of having enough egg cartons, paper tubes, straws, or whatever I might find interesting to have enough for a group class.

I saw examples of these African inspired masks at Fem Manuals, one of my favorite art sites ever! They always have incredibly creative projects, recycle often, and really capture the adventure that their young artists are constantly having.

Our masks are created using recycled laundry soap containers, bottle caps, acrylic paint, and other materials from the studio. I assisted with construction using a hot glue gun. We discussed the stylized geometric forms and special uses for masks in Africa, as in many cultures of the world. Here are some of our creations.

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

Mixed Media Autumn Trees

Inspiration for this lesson came from the Briargrove  Elementary Art blog. I love their use of recycled materials for so many of their projects.

First the children each designed a leaf stamp in black marker on a circle of styrofoam egg carton material. They pressed the details into the foam with ball point pens, and then cut around the outer edges of the leaf. These were glued to recycled bottle tops and ready to use as stamps.

Then we set out to make a bare tree collage. Each child chose a 12"x18" sheet of Fadeless 2-Color paper. We trimmed a 2" strip from the bottom of sheet, flipped it and glued it to the bottom edge of the now 12"x16" piece.  We discussed how this would be the horizon line of their work and that the trees roots could reach down below the line and into the ground. The children used scraps of various colored construction paper glued onto their background paper to form the tree. The scraps were to illustrate the varying color and texture of the bark and the tree's roots, trunk, and branches.

We then brushed tempera paint onto our stamps and filled our trees with leaves. I encouraged not cleaning the stamps between colors to let the leaves have a natural variation in color. The children were also allowed to try colors that may not actually be seen on real trees in nature. The final works were so colorful and expressive—an all over great lesson. I love autumn!

Recycled Quilt Collages

Okay, one more recycled art project before I mix things up again. The children and I discussed Faith Ringgold, who is well known for her fabric story quilts. I provided lots of fabric scraps from my sewing cabinet and the children cut and pasted their collages onto recycled chipboard-- save the backs of those paper pads! You could also use cereal boxes or corrugated cardboard. As a little reward, they could also add some glitter glue to the collages as a last step.

Watercolor Still Life on Newsprint

Here are some gorgeous paintings we created, staying with the recycled theme. Newsprint can be a tougher surface than you might imagine. It also adds pattern and dimension to these still life paintings, not to mention that is being saved from the trash. Try to use pages with all type and no images, which may detract from the final piece. I can not remember where I was inspired by this lesson, so please speak up if you know. The children first drew their subject with as much detail as possible, using black and white cray pas. Then they were asked to add color using watercolors. Brilliant!

I found the blog that inspired this lesson! It's from Briargrove Elementary. They have lots of great recycled art projects! Thanks!

Recycled Robots

Here's another project from this summer's Recycled Art camp. I took this idea from the Deep Space Sparkle site— one of my favorites! The kids each worked on a 12x18 colored paper of their choice and printed using recycled materials such as empty spools of thread, pop lids, paper tubes etc. After their prints were dry they selected from the box of recycled goodies I've been amassing for the past few months. Can you see any product placement? We talked about trying not to think of packaging as the product it used to hold, but as lovely choices for shapes and colors. We also discussed the thought, time and money put into packaging—a great reason to take advantage of its use as art materials!

Magazine Flowers

I saw this lesson on the Teach Kids Art site, and had to make it part of my Recycled Art Camp this summer. We used recycled lids as our templates to trace four different sized circles on magazine pages of our choosing. Then we folded each circle in half three times and cut petal patterns onto the outer edge. Our smallest circle was left untouched to become the center of the flower. We also cut out a pair of leaves, and rolled up a half page from a magazine to become the stem. I also encouraged the students to add bits and pieces of their cutouts to fill the negative space of their compositions and to give them some pattern. Here are a few of our beautiful flowers.

Louise Nevelson Assemblage

One of my favorite artists is Louise Nevelson, so I decided to try a lesson using recycled materials to create Nevelson inspired assemblages. We talked about the artist's use of discarded materials and giving them a new life. Our pieces started with a 12x12 inch piece of corrugated cardboard as a base. We then took paper egg cartons, cardboard paper tubes, popsicle sticks, and extra pieces of corrugated cardboard to create our forms. I suggested repetition of elements, variation of texture, and utilizing as much of the space as possible. We generously glued our pieces onto the supporting structure. When dry, each student chose a single acrylic color to paint their pieces, trying to cover all of the viewable areas. Although the materials used for construction were practically free, these did require a lot of paint to get good coverage. So worth it though!