We recently got home from what is becoming our annual trip to Indianapolis. While we were there, we had to visit the Indianapolis Children's Museum! This year Eli was even more into all the exhibits since he was a year older! The girls had a great time exploring again, and Bria even remembered where things were! One of the favorites is still the large Chihuly sculpture in the center of the museum, and of course the area where you get to put together large plastic pieces made to look like the glass pieces in the sculpture.
Last year when we got home we made our own version of glass sculptures.
While my aunt and I discussed how we might be able to replicate it for kids, I had no idea she had made her own version with one of her art classes! And she won her school an awesome prize with it too! So while we were out there this year we started one with her (and finished it at home when we had more materials). I cannot take any credit for this awesome craft; it was all my aunt's idea!
First you need the really cheap, thin water bottles with their labels removed. Gather a bunch of them and color them all with permanent markers. Any permanent marker will do; we have a ton of Sharpies, so that is what we used at home.
The starting just a little above the bottom, cut the bottle in a spiral almost all the way up!
At this point my kids found they were a lot of fun to play with like this. The girls also enjoyed coloring designs on the bottle and then watching how the designs changed once the bottles were cut!
Once we were home and had gone through the rest of that case of water, we finished coloring and cutting the bottles. Then you need some sort of wire. We used a coat hanger. We opened the top and threaded on the bottles on. Once they were all there we closed it back up and it was ready to hang. My aunt used pipe cleaners to attach her classes bottles to a large, circular wire.
Once you have them all attached, hang and enjoy! Here are a few pictures of ours! It finally ended up in the play room in front of a window because I wasn't sure it would hold up to wind and rain.
May not be as impressive as the Chihuly sculpture, but it is still quite pretty (and much safer for little hands). You could make one as big or small as you want, and it is fairly mess free as long as your little ones can handle markers well. Definitely a fun art project! A big thank you to my lovely aunt for sharing it with my kids (and now all my readers)!
