Chihuly Project Explained
Our project began with students collecting water bottles at
snack times each day. I also brought in
other water bottles so we’d have larger bottles to work with.
We removed labels, caps, and later cut the bottoms off each
bottle using scissors. The bottle
crushes at the bottom at first, but once a hole is made, it’s easy to cut the
rest. We saved the caps and bottoms as
well. There are other ideas for their
use as well.
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| Painting the Bottles |
Students painted the inside
of bottles with acrylic craft paints or left over interior satin paint. Both worked well. I emphasized using a thin layer of paint to
be sure it would dry over night. (The
reason for painting the inside was to get the shiny outside that looks more
like glass.)
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| Cutting Spirals |
As bottles dried, we started cutting them from bottom to top
in spirals. The closer the cut, the
longer the “spring” or “slinky” we created.
I had to remind students not to cut too narrow as the larger bottles
creating a very long spiral. Too wide yields
little change in bottle shape.
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| Attaching each bottle with wire |
The base structure was created from a 54-inch tomato cage
wrapped in chicken wire.
I attached bottles to the base structure with lightweight
wire (floral wire). It took several
hours each afternoon attaching bottles. The
kids enjoyed seeing its progress each morning and were eager to prepare more
bottles if needed.
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| Before flipping it over |
The children’s art show and performance took place at our
high school performing arts center. The
kids were extremely proud of all their hard work!
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| On Display at the Performing Arts Center |
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