I am so excited to share the culmination and process behind 5 months of hard work to create this Bottle Cap Mural! This mural project is an amazing example of how capable children are given the opportunity to express themselves in new and innovative ways. I am so proud of the 208 students who collected over TEN THOUSAND bottle caps, caps that otherwise would have gone into the trash, to create this incredible ocean mural. There were so many valuable steps involved, all of which I will discuss here. I couldn’t have done this without the help and encouragement of my boss (THANK YOU RACHEL!!!) and our school community. I also relied heavily on an incredible book called Bottlecap Little Bottlecap. I am so grateful to the author, Michelle Stitzlein, who made this all seem so doable. It really is!!! If you are a teacher looking for ways to encourage your student’s to help the environment, learn new skills, take on a challenge and build community, this is an amazing project! I hope you enjoy reading about it.
We learn about oceans as a school, so an ocean theme to our mural felt like a natural fit. First every student in our school had the opportunity to brainstorm ocean ideas and sketch them out on regular 8.5×11 paper. I kept ocean books on the drawing table to inspire kids and give them ideas. We collected all the sketches and combined them into one big ocean design. I tried to use as many ideas as I could so kids would look at the mural and say “Hey, that’s my idea!” Fortunately, my intention worked. So many kids felt responsible for each design detail of the mural.
While we designed, we also counted and sorted. Our school ranges from K-6. It was fascinating to see that the sixth graders enjoyed the sorting and counting process as much as the kindergartners. We reused plastic bags collected by teachers over the years to sort the caps. I had collection boxes for caps spread out throughout the school. The first week of the project I would lay in bed at night filled with anxiety. “What are we going to do if we don’t collect any bottle caps? I’m going to lose my job!” Then I got to school Monday morning and almost all the boxes were filled to the brim! This was in ONE WEEK. It took us two months total to collect over 10,000 caps of all different sizes, shapes and colors. If there is one thing I learned from this experience, community is a powerful thing.
Once we collected and sorted all the caps, we had to get the art onto the wood panels. I had bought three 4×7 wood panels at our local lumber yard. This was a little pricey, but it was the only cost of the project in addition to the screws. You might get lucky and have a connection to a lumber yard, or hardware store. I got a great discount at the lumber yard just by telling them I’m a teacher. Thanks Anawalt! First, we painted the panels white. Different classes got to do different tasks. Not every class got to paint. Every student did get to drill, but we’ll get to that in a bit. After we painted the wood white and let it dry, we propped the panels up against a wall and projected the kids art up on the panels. This was a little tricky, getting it to fit just right, but it was more for the experience than anything else, so I felt ok going in after and fixing any areas that needed fixing. We had kindergartners and first graders tracing the projected art on the panels. It felt so Reggio and so right. I think this may have been my favorite part of the process. I can get high just thinking about it. It was really cool.
Then we painted. We used regular tempera paint. The kids talked about what colors worked best for different areas. They stretched their bodies over the wood boards to get every last spot. They collaborated and communicated. They laughed and relaxed. Painting took us almost two weeks. At first we were going to leave the boards white, but one of our amazing parent volunteers, who is also an artist, really encouraged us to take the time to paint and I’m so glad she did. This was a really worthwhile step in the process and it made the mural really pop. Some kids wanted us to leave it just as a painting because it looked so pretty. To be honest, I was a little scared myself it wouldn’t look as good once we added the bottle caps. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case.
Next step, and perhaps the most highly anticipated step, was the drilling. Wow, was this fun. Every student from kindergarten to sixth grade learned how to operate a power drill safely under a teacher’s supervision, as well as many incredible parent volunteers. They all did it and they did it well. There is a lot of discussion online about kids and tools. I am a huge advocate of children working with tools. I think children are capable way beyond our expectations and if we raise the bar for them, they will pole vault over it. I’m so proud of these kids. We did not have one accident. If ever a child was being silly with a drill, they were asked to sit aside, but really, it was few and far between that that even happened. They were mesmerized, excited, curious and engaged. They were also really surprised over how easy it was to do. If I’m being really honest, I had never used a drill before this project. (AHH! Don’t tell my boss!) I was really surprised too and now I am totally hooked. I am asking for a tool belt for my next birthday! (A really nice natural leather one, Ev, if you’re reading this.)
So we drilled. And we drilled and we drilled and we drilled. For 3 months we drilled. Then we were done.
To say the mural is gorgeous, to me, is an understatement. It’s magnificent. It exudes joy, innovation and creativity. It even sparkles in the sunlight! Our nursery school classes have been taking mini field trips to our yard just to see it. They talk about perspective and artist’s like Claude Monet. They talk about pointillism. They discuss recycling. They ask questions. They make comments. They touch the mural and wonder who knows what. This is the part I didn’t think about. The part that keeps going. This mural belongs to the children. It’s theirs, from start to finish, though it’s really never finished. It keeps living and breathing in these kids and I am so very proud of them for accomplishing such an awesome task. And, if I’m being really honest, I’m pretty proud of myself too for being a part of it.
If you have any questions that I didn’t answer here, please don’t hesitate to email me. I’d be happy to talk to you. Thanks for reading along!
This is so fantastic and beautiful! Great job!
Thank you so much!!
Did you seal the painted wood before you starting drilling the bottlecaps on? I am just wondering if they paint will run or fade if unsealed and left outside? It is a FANTASTIC integration of art, recycling and community
Hi Patti, I didn’t seal it because it wasn’t supposed to be outside originally. Then we changed the plan and I wished it was sealed. I definitely recommend doing that because it will fade. Thanks so much!
This is just BREATHTAKING! I’m so proud of you, Meri! I totally get how you could get high just thinking about the process. It’s something that you and all the kids will remember forever, and they are so lucky to have you as their teacher!
Thank you for taking the time to read my post Stephanie! It was a really special experience. Thank you!!
Wow, this is absolutely amazing and beautiful! Thank you for sharing. I already collect our own bottle caps for a future smaller scale project I’ve had at the back of my mind. But you’ve inspired me to take it further, to my daughter’s school. Just wonderful!!
Oh, that’s wonderful! I can’t recommend it enough and you can do it on any scale that’s suitable for your community. Have fun! I’d love to see pics when you do it!
Thank you. I’m already thinking about discussing it with the school principal next week. Will be sure to send pics of whatever eventuates!
This a fantastic project! May I ask what inspired your idea? This is an example of how art can teach those higher order thinking skills that Common Core requires AND it was FUN! Congratulations! I cant wait to try this! Thank you for posting.
Oh, I love hearing this Dee! Please keep me posted if you try this out at your school and if you have any questions at all. I had seen pictures of bottle cap murals on pinterest and just thought they were so beautiful. When I did some investigating I found there was a book on how to do one with your school and ordered it. Fortunately I have a very open minded boss who gave me the green light on the project. I am very grateful. It’s an incredibly worthwhile experience.
i am so in awe of you, meri. this was such a beautiful post and the mural is so incredible i just can’t believe it!! i love the feeling of community and pride that you gave your kids. they are so lucky to have you.
Crying reading your comment. Thank you Bar : )
Brilliant idea – have shared on my facebook page
Thank you so much Lynda. I appreciate you spreading the word about this amazing project. So proud of these kids!
I don’t even know what to write…this is amazing. Every vision that you seem to have comes alive with incredible beauty and a passion that make us all ( or at least me) go out and do something that makes a difference. You should be so proud of the difference you are making to your school, your kids, and all the people who will look at this project and will also want to make a difference! You always teach people to be up for a challenge 🙂
How incredibly inspiring and absolutely gorgeous! Well done! This is definitely a project I’d love to do when I get back in my classroom! In the meantime I might have to think about a mini mural in the garden with my kids. Although it might take us a good while to amass enough bottle tops. Again, well done!
Small Scale is great too! Go for it!!!
And thank you so much for your kind words!
This is just sensational! I’m so inspired, I want to make something small-scale at home and have begun to save bottle tops. I’m also going to pass this on to my brother-in-law who’s a Junior High Principal and plant the seed that there must be more! More people like you; more art created; more of this wonderful project spread. Fantastic and I do hope to have the chance to come to see it personally! Bravo!
Thank you so much Gina! I am in awe over how many teachers have contacted me with amazing questions, hoping to do something similar at their own school! So exciting!!!
Fantastic project ..those children learned so much more than making a beautiful mural. Thank you for your time and love
Thank you so much Kathy! They really did. I think over time I will be able to see more ways this experience enhanced our school community. I’m really excited about it. Thanks for taking the time to comment and read my post!
Wow! So wish I could do this at my school! One question: would hot glue work to adhere the caps? Thanks,
Yes! Definitely. If you want to skip the drilling you can use glue. I would recommend wood glue over hot glue though. Stronger. Even regular Elmer’s glue would probably work great. Give it a try!!! And if you do, please let me know!
I adore this project! It’s amazing on so many levels – your students are lucky to have you!
Thank you so much for saying so. It was a wonderful experience.
Beautiful project – so glad my aunty sent me the link! I work on the campaign to get 10c refunds on bottles and cans across Australia and have a collection of bottle lids at home. Now I know what to do with them! Can your mural be visited? Where in the world is this mural? Bottle lids are such a universal thing and a huge litter problem that your project could inspire people everywhere. I believe that in Germany they have ‘tethered’ lids ie joined to the bottles by a little bit of plastic – this instantly halves the beverage container litter that can end up in the ocean harming our fellow creatures (birds, turtles and whales). Kids could write letters to bottle companies to push for this solution. It is just a matter of designing out the problem.
People can support the Cash for Containers campaign at http://www.boomerangalliance.org.au 🙂 We have a 10m banner made with 260 PET bottles drilled and sewn onto mesh in shape of words: 8 BILLION WASTED (how many bottles and cans NOT recycled every year in Australia) – currently in Lismore NSW but can be borrowed by schools..
That is such a beautiful artwork. I can imagine the students have loved it every step of the way. Powerful and beautiful all at the same time. I would love to do something like this at my school.
Thank you so much Pru. This is a fantastic community builder for any school and the kids learn so much. If you have the opportunity, go for it!!!
Wow! I love this.
Thanks so much Elisha!
I am a 91 year old great grandfather and would love to be involved with my 12 great grand children at our family camp. How could we get started? Just start? Bob McFarling, in Westland, Michigan. Does Acorn Coop school know?
That sounds great! Good for you! Yes, just start collecting bottle caps. Get your whole family involved. You’ll have a ton in no time. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!!
This is beautiful. I have been collecting caps for a year now. Not very aggressively, but we have started. I was glad to see that you used Tempera. Did you put any finish over the paint before starting to screw in the tops? We will have ours outside and I would hate to see the paint wash off.
Thank you for sharing this. So amazing. This is a great school memory for all the children involved.
Thank you so much Kate. We didn’t put a finish on the paint. Maybe we should have. AHHH : ) Fortunately, we live in Los Angeles so the weather isn’t so much a factor. I so hope you make your own mural. It’s such a valuable, rich experience for the kids!
Wow! I absolutely love this… every detail! One question. Does the tempra paint run in the rain? Was using an acrylic or exterior latex paint discussed and thrown out for some reason? I’m changing schools next year and this kind of thing is EXACTLY what I was looking for as a community outreach project to get new students, administration and especially community members excited about the idea of change to the existing program.
Thank you so much! Using tempera paint was actually the one mistake I made. You are exactly right. I didn’t think this would be going outside and the plan was changed. The rain has washed away the paint. It still looks great but if I had to do it over, I would have used a sealer for outdoors. Please let me know if you have any other questions! Hope your next school goes for it! It’s an amazing project. Good luck!
Wow! THIS IS AWESOME ON SO MANY LEVELS! I have one question: Was there s reason for using tempera paint rather than exterior water based latex or acrylic? My thought was that tempera would run in the rain. Did you waterproof it with some sort of shellac or polyurethane during the process or after?
Wow!! This is just wonderful!! My son’s school has also been collecting plastic lids this year. He said it was a mural the art teacher was going to put together. After seeing this one I can’t wait to see the one they come up with at his school. Amazing job!
Thank you so much Jenette! This was a really extraordinary experience for the kids and for me! The process and the outcome are truly amazing. So glad to hear things like this are happening at other schools! Lucky kids.
Hello my name is Alandra Lightfoot . I am a college student at Chaffey Community College in Rancho Cucamonga ,CA. Would you please mind Emailing me at lightfoot_alandra@yahoo.com. I want to talk about the idea to this and applying it to a project I am working on . Thank You 🙂
Why did you drill/screw the caps into place rather than just hammer/nail them?
How is this art work faring outside? Do the lip of the lid collect dirt?
I did a similar project but we turned our caps the other way, (flat side up), stuck them on with tiling adhesive and grouted with waterproof grout. The grouting was very very hard work! So, just wondering about the ups and owns of your method.
Wonderful result by the way, I am so with you on kids and tools!
Thanks Sue! We drilled them to give every child the opportunity to work with a power drill. It was a fantastic learning experience for the kids. I didn’t put a seal on the paint, which I regret, but we didn’t know it would be outside. I definitely recommend sealing it if you do this. Dirt hasn’t really been an issue. Hope that is helpful! Thanks for reading along!
What kind of wood and and type of nails exactly did you use?
Hi Jenny, We used standard ply wood found out any lumber yard. I believe they are 3×4 sheets. It’s been a long time and I don’t remember exactly which screws. My apologies. You can definitely ask in the hardware store. Good luck!!
Hi Meri! I am a mom with two kids in LAUSD, and I am in charge of our parent volunteer arts committee. I was so inspired by your cap mural that we did it this past weekend at our school! I showed our 4th graders (the grade I chose to do it with) your website and they were blown away. We are almost done with it, just a few background caps to drill on. We used pan head philips head screws, btw (for question up top). Our plywood was 3/8″ thick, so screws were 3/8th and 1/2 inch for the caps that we doubled up. LAUSD is lacking so much art that our parents are always pitching in. I would love to share a picture of our finished mural with you. I painted the background with white exterior paint, and I’ll polyeurethane (sp) the back. I painted the design I wanted first (per your advice!) and that made it very easy for the 4th graders (and their parents) to drill the caps where I wanted them. Thank you so much for the inspiration. It was incredible the amount of caps we collected (close to 8,000 – we have to count them next week) and how involved our whole community got. If there is some way I can share a picture with you, that would be great. Thank you for your site and all the info on this project! It was so helpful.
Oh my goodness! YES!!!!! Please sent me a pic at mericherryla@gmail.com sorry for the late response. My comment section wasn’t working for the past few weeks. I am so thrilled by your message and can’t wait to see. Congrats!!!
Hi Meri! I love your mural- it inspired me to do one with my students! We are painting the board tomorrow (house paint) and will then begin screwing the caps on. Do you know if there is a type of fixative/preservative for the caps?
I’m so happy to hear this! Good luck. Do you mean to preserve the caps or make them adhere to the wood? To preserve, I find them to be really durable. I don’t know if you need one? To adhere, we just screwed them in and that worked great. Let me know if that helps. Have so much fun!
I am about to embark on this adventure with our K-5 students in rural Alaska, our installation will be on a cement wall, similar to this project… any advice about how to install the mural (plywood to cement/concrete)? Thank you for sharing – very inspiring!
Hi Meri, I am about to begin a similar mural, and are very interested to see how your amazing mural has weathered? I have researched the process thanks to great artists like yourself, but are wondering what it looks like a nearly 2 years on. I live in Australia, and am worried the bottle tops will fade in the sun? Thanks again for your inspiration, keep making amazing art!
Thank you so much Jane! I really appreciate it. Sadly the mural was taken down so I don’t have the experience to know how it lasted. For the year that it was up (in the California sun) the bottle caps stayed vibrant. The paint faded a lot because it wasn’t primed or treated since I didn’t expect it to be outside. I think the caps will hold their color but like I said, I can’t be sure. I wish you all the best and let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks! Meri
I’m so sorry it got taken down. I hope that was with your support, and is still on display somewhere beautiful. We have begun ours, but i decided to keep it indoors for fear of fading and damage by both weather and children. So much effort and beauty, I think I would cry if it got ruined. But like so many art pieces, I suppose the end product is only one part of the journey, just as you created with your children.
I am a student, a junior for exact, and i love this idea. I hope my clubs here would volunteer their time and make our community more colorful and reunite us again, as a school.
Maybe you can recommend it? Get a team together. It’s a great community builder. Good luck!
HI there! I am soooo excited to begin our own bottle cap mural. We have been collecting for 2 years! We have our design and are ready to begin. Someone donated some boards to us, but now that I have read your blog, I think I should go with the screw method. We were just going to use gorilla glue and polyurethane. But the screw idea sounds great – partially just to let the kids use the drill! So, would you mind telling me how thick your boards were? By the way, I just saw that it was taken down. I hope that was okay…and that they are still displayed somewhere. For the kids, a year is still a long time, though. The project was gorgeous.
Hi Lydia! Great. Go for it. It’s all about learning to drill. It’s a great skill. Definitely recommend. The boards were standard 4×4 panels from Home Depot from what I recall. Good Luck!
Hi Merry,
What a nice project and thanks for sharing it online. I am an artist in the Seattle area helping a school with a similar project. I was just wondering how the bottle caps are holding up. Are they cracking or fading? I saw your comments about the paint, do you have any other lessons learned that could help us have a successful project?
Thanks for your time,
Stephanie
Hi Stephanie. I no longer work at the school I did this at. I would definitely seal the paint and if you want to be extra cautious maybe put some sort of seal on the caps when you’re all done as well, especially if it’s going outside. Good luck! Meri
I love this project! Was there a particular reason you used screws instead of glue?
We wanted all the kids to learn how to use a power drill. That was really the focus : )
Hi! So Beautiful!! About how many drills did you have going/available? How many students were allowed to drill at one time? Finally, what did the other students do when it wasn’t their turn to drill? Thanks so much for posting this and generously answering questions even years after the fact!!
HI Laura, I met the kids in small groups of 5 or six and they took turns with 5 drills but we only had two or three good ones so it was two kids to a drill about. The other kids watched until it was their turn. Good luck!!
Hi! Can you tell me what kind of screws you used? We are doing a project at our elementary school and used wood glue, but need to screw them in. I’m thinking 1/4 inch will be long enough
My fifth graders and I are going to be doing a mural of the United States. We are in the process of collecting the bottle caps now. I would like to put the caps on upside down from the way you have it to get more color as some of the caps have the white on the inside of the lid. Have you tried gluing them to the plywood or did you happen to read anywhere if that would or would not work? Thanks so much for any help you can offer!!
Such a great project! Do you remember what size screws you used? We are going to work on one at my school, but screws sound way better than glue!