Recycled Art

Earth Day was last week and my daugther's 1st grade class is putting on a recycled art project. She wanted to use plastic stuff from the recycling bin to make a cow so I bought some not so environmentally friendly glue (ahem - epoxy, not glue)- E6000. It's a VOC (volatile organic chemical - I'm letting my previous life as a lab rat out) and pretty much indestructible and doesn't decay over time. People use it to hold countertops on. Perhaps it was overkill but it's holding!

I tried really hard to let her do it herself but as it's due tomorrow and she was only making a mess by pulling things out of the recycling bin and putting it in a pile for the last 10 days, I decided to help her. We started with a plastic (#1 PETE aka polyethylene terephthalate) strawberry container for the body...



and cut out 4 "legs" from an egg carton (also #1 PETE aka polyethylene terephthalate).



Then we used a crushed Pepsi can (Aluminum) for the neck.



Strung the tabs from some soda cans (aluminum on several pieces of yarn (acrylic) and attached it to the body.


She then begged me to go to the store to buy AquaPods for the head. Um... no... this is a recycling project, not a collect art supplies project - use what we have. So I cut a waterbottle (also #1 PETE aka polyethylene terephthalate) that she had taken on a field trip last week in half and she got to choose what side she'd use for the head and we used a Coke can for the horns. This, of course, makes the head side heavy so we put a bag of rice in it to keep it standing up. I would have used a recycled piece of muslin for the bag but Emily doesn't have the sewing skills to pull that one off so we used a baggie that had something non-food in it previously (I keep these around for my supplies - appliques, buttons, half-finished projects).



We got it all expoxied together last night (has to sit without touching anything for 2-10 minutes and then held together for about 10 minutes and it stinks to high heaven - I still have a headache from it 15 hours later) and let it cure overnight. We have to paint it (or maybe paper mache!) tonight.

This morning, Emily says to me, "That doesn't look like horns Mommy!". oh well! I actually think it looks like a cat. Maybe I can convince her to grab some ribbon from my scrap pile and put a bow on top!

So that's why I haven't added anything new to get to 100 listings on Etsy - I'm at 98 listings! Come and visit to see my latest - kanzashi roses


UPDATE! Emily decided that it does, in fact, look more like a cat and she "pennted" (painted) her pink and named her Kitty the Cat!