Friday, May 4, 2012

We used around 13,000 bottle caps!!

In just over two days my k-6 students, some of our teachers, and I completed a 96 square foot bottle cap mural!!  It could not have went any smoother!  The photos below will show you our step-by-step process.

 This box sits outside of my classroom door.  The kids drop off any caps as they collect them.
 This is my back counter in my room.  Boxes full of caps.
 Students separate the bottle caps according to color.
 This is the sketch that I came up with.  I tried to draw it according to what colors we had the most of.  I knew I had lots of white, blue, and green.
 This wall above the exit doors is where the mural will be mounted.  I love the idea of having it so high.  This way no little wondering hands will be able to touch it! :)
 Here's me in action drawing the mural.  

 When the drawing was finished I painted it with acrylic paint.  
 Here are my students in action.  First we covered the entire mural just to make sure we had enough of each color.  Good thing we did because we ran out of blue for the sky.  When the entire piece was covered then we began to glue the caps down.








 This is our finished product....and what a production it was!  It will be displayed on the stage at our art show and then permanently displayed on the wall outside of my classroom.  Congratulations to all of my students on doing such a wonderful job!!  

4 comments:

  1. What kind of glue did you use? How did you pick who got to work on the mural? (In your photos there's maybe 6 to 8 kids around the mural - what was the rest of the class doing? Or did they come in extra time to work on it?) And what are the panels made of? Is it MDF? Or what?

    Sorry for all the questions - but the mural looks great!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Me again - maybe I'm missing something but I'm having a hard time finding a "follow" button on your blog. Usually it's right along the top and it isn't on yours. Since you seem to be a relatively new blog, if you want to gain followers I'd suggest you make sure that, somewhere obvious on or near the top of the blog, you have a place for people to click, and maybe even more up your followers so people can see them.

    Hope I'm not offending you - but since I've been blogging for a while I found that this really works. I just happened on you today and want to make sure I can come back and visit you again! Happy blogging!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wanted to screw all of the caps down like most mural blogs had recommended, but I was told it would be too heavy to hang on the wall. So we used bathtub glue instead, this way it wold have a strong hold and be humidity controlled. I started on a Monday morning with my first class of the day, kindergarten, and where they left off the next class took over. This went on with every class until the entire mural was finished. I had three panels set up with groups of 8-10 students working on each panel at a time. This way all 24-30 kids were all kept busy during the project, that's why it was finished so quickly. No one was allowed to work on it outside of their class time. I was hoping it would take at least three days, but it did not! We used birch plywood, 1/4" thick. The idea of the mural was to put temporary art work on a huge white wall in our school that needed color. In a few years I wanted to do another mural to replace this one. This way nothing was permanent, there would eventually be something new to look at (I'm not a fan of "permanent" art).

    I'm new to blogging, but I think you can just click "join this site" and that will allow you to follow me.....I think! :) Thanks for your input!

    ReplyDelete
  4. What kind of glue did you use ? The glue construction in gun ?

    ReplyDelete