Chihuly water bottle sculptures

Chihuly Water Bottle Sculptures 

This project turned out so cool! I of course found this great idea on Pinterest. I used the format from the blog art class with LMJ. The inspiration for the project is by the artist Dale Chihuly. He has a great website with his artwork here https://www.chihuly.com/

I had the kids collect water bottles for a couple of weeks. I probably had over a 1000 come in. I actually only used around 430. Each student in kindergarten and first grade painted one water bottle. 

I used primary and secondary colors of acrylic paint by Dick Blick. The students used almost all of the half gallons.

I cut the bottoms off and removed the lids before they painted them. They used long handled brushes and acrylic paint to paint the inside of the bottles. 

After they painted them I had them put them in baskets to keep them organized. Since they were wet inside it didn't matter if they were touching. 

When they were dry I cut them all into spirals. I think it only took me around an hour to do 144 bottles. I didn't trust my kindergarteners and first graders to do this part. I could see so many bottles cut short!!  

After they were all cut I bundled them into groups of four and tied them with fishing line onto the flat steel rods with holes that I had purchased from Home Depot. Our PTO actually helped fund this project. Again, this was not my original idea. I decided not to use a heat gun to splay them. I attempted it a couple of times and the ones I did looked like they had been run over with a truck. 

 I made three sculptures. Each sculpture had around 144 bottles. 

Our custodians hung the sculptures above the school stairs. I'm thrilled with the results and our  custodians did a great job hanging them.