Recycled Bottle Top Mosaics

How cool are these?!!?!  I have been patiently waiting to do this project for over a year now.  I hadn't had enough soda, juice, and water bottle tops turned in until recently.  I have asked parents and students to collect them and turn them in.  I have been collecting them like a mad woman in my own kitchen as well. After I get them turned in, I organize them based on color into different boxes.

This lesson was taught to my "art enrichment" students.  It is comprised of only 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders.  We discussed what the different types of "fine arts" included.  Then we talked about what the word "advocate" meant.  We talked about the importance of spreading the word of how important the arts are!

 

 To start, students looked at examples of drama faces, paint pallettes, and guitars and music notes.  Then, they sketched out their own versions of the images onto large scale foam boards.  Next, the painted the images in with acrylic paint.  After that, they laid out bottle caps on top of the paint; making sure to coordinate alike colors.  Finally, we glued each bottle cap down to complete our recycled mosaics!

Recycled Crayons

I had a ton of old crayons that were broken into tiny bits.  Too tiny and old for my students to want to use them to color their artwork.  I had seen some tutorials on some blogs and my friend Casey had also done this project; so I decided to give it a try!

All you have to do is:

1. Collect some silicone ice trays (I got all of mine at the dollar tree) 
2. Remove all paper wrappers from crayons (this part is tedious and boring)
3. Break crayons into small, manageable pieces that will easily fit into the trays
4. Fill the trays to the top with crayon pieces, be creative...mix the colors up!
5. Place in a 200 degree oven
6. Check to see if they are all melted in about 5-10 minutes
7. Carefuly remove trays from oven, set aside to let crayons cool down (I had a little fun creating a marble effect in the hot crayons with a toothpick!)
8. After about 15 mninutes, pop crayons out of trays (don't wait to long because they will be too hard to get out)
9. COLOR!