Recycled Bottle Art

The finished pieces in the morning light

Gluing the painted bottles to the plywood base

The first step-- taking a bunch of bottles and creating a nice design

We made these as a part of a Sharing the Planet unit with Grade 2/3.  The visual arts line of inquiry was "reusing and recycling different materials."  My inspiration for the whole concept of using plastic bottles came from this site:  http://www.artgrange.com/michelleworkshop.html

We started the project with a huge bottle collection-- the art room was ill equipped to deal with hundreds of bottles, it was out of control!  During the first lesson, the kids were divided up into table groups and a whole bunch o' bottles were dumped in front of them.  I ran around and took photos of the strongest designs.

I printed out the photos of a few designs for each group and during the next class they chose one, recreated it and decided on the colors.  They painted with tempera-- two classes were needed for that as the plastic required a few layers.

Meanwhile, a wonderful helper in the Design Tech class cut out large pieces of plywood for me in the shape that the kids chose.  The kids painted the wood during the next class and glued the painted bottles in the following class.  It was during this part that I was really glad that I took photos so they could remember their designs.

The finished pieces were covered with clear varnish and hung outside on a wall near the play area.