Bottle cap murals

Bottle cap murals

I had my school start collecting bottle caps around September and then I put a halt to it at the end of November. We ended up with 1000's of bottle caps!

 I believe the kids loved collecting and sorting them. I was low on a few colors such as purple and pink but I ended up having enough of the other colors to suit my needs.
I first painted the treated lumber with acrylic paint of the characters. We are the Monroe Hornets so of course we had to have one be a bee!

My principal wanted a caterpillar on one so I painted  Eric Carle's "Hungry Caterpillar" on another one. 

I used wood glue and had each child glue two bottle caps on each mural. The wood glue didn't stick very well but it didn't matter since we were going to screw each bottle cap down. 

I had my husband and a family friend come in and screw all  the bottle caps in since they were going to be hung outside.  Yep, love family and friends!! I really don't think it takes away from the art. 

I had one board left(not as wide) so I bought DAP Dynaflex 230 caulking. This one will be hung indoors so we don't need to worry about screwing them in. This glue worked much better than the wood glue.

This one wasn't my idea. I found this at http://www.katiemorrisart.com/2015/04/2015-bottle-cap-murals.html

Her's was much bigger. Thanks for the idea Katie Morris! 

abstract tree mural 1st grade art project

Abstract tree mural 1st grade

I wanted to do a mural that could be displayed all year in the school with my first graders. Using tempera paint with first graders was a little risky for me so I came up with another idea. I saw a similar design on coloruswell.com. An artist named John DeFaro drew a tree on a poster for students during a workshop and then provided swirly designs for them to color.

I painted a tree in our school hallway. In the art room we discussed designs and patterns in art. Students were provided a circle to decorate (I printed these on card stock). 

They used black permanent markers to outline their designs and then used color sticks (made by crayola) to color them.

Using heavy duty masking tape we stuck them to the tree.  Hopefully it stays  up all year! Next year I plan on removing the circles and having the next 1st grade classes make a new design (maybe birds?). Our first graders go  to another building when they graduate to the second grade.