Why Not Try Our Fantastic Plastic Bottle Top Garden Idea!!
This plastic bottle top art ideas came from us modifying our kids garden.
As a play area for the kids, we invested in a large wooden swing set.
We used to use the smaller metal framed ones and were replacing them every year so I splashed out on this wooden one and im so glad I did.
Its amazing, sturdy and has 10 year guarantee! Woo hoo!
However, the one downside is I can’t move it around the garden when the kids start to damage the grass with their feet.
We ended up with 2 long bare patches of soil which, in this weather, just gets muddy and no one can play. So we had intended on buying the under swing rubber mats.
However, while looking at the bare patches one afternoon CC decided that they looked like butterfly wings and a fantastic idea was born.
Try This Fantastic Bottle Top Garden Craft
As we try to recycle everything we can, we always collect our plastic bottle tops and bits and bobs, so when CC suggested the butterfly it made perfect sense to use all these colourful plastic bottle tops instead of matting to make out garden fabulous and one of a kind.
What amazing coloured wings we could make with plactic bottle caps!!
When I suggested this idea to the kids they were not so enthusiastic though, but we went ahead, and spent a few weeks collecting all the lids we could find from our homes and the surrounding area.
This was a perfect learning craft for the kids as we covered so many ways to recycle as well as collecting and recycling all the discarded bottles we found around our homes, woods and parks, so we looked after out neighbourhood too.
How we made our bottle top butterfly..
Materials
- Lots and lots of bottle caps. (A coffee shop also put out a basket and collected the milk bottle tops for us for FREE!)
- Small hand trowel to flatted the soil and remove some extra grass in areas
- A cover for the kids to sit on to keep clean.
- Cement mix to lay the bottle caps on and more for afterwards to set over the top.
Before we began..
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Firstly, we scratched out an approximate shape in the mud to make sure we knew the size and shape of our butterfly.
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We made a firm cement mix with water and spread out a 2 cm layer over the shape.
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Next, we separated all the bottle caps into colours and split each colour in 2, one piles, for each wing.
Right, let’s get started..
- Once finished, we took the colour we had the most of, blue and used this to make an outline for the butterfly.
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Next the kids scratched out an area of grass for the large white ‘body’ lids to fit in and filled it with more cement.
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Laying the white lids up the centre, we then used each colour in turn to make a pattern down the wings. The girls were keen on red hearts as ‘they love to come here’ (I did well up at that point!)
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As we reached the lower end of the wings we realised we didn’t have enough caps to make more full bands of colour so we made a mixture for the last part.
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Once all the caps had been inserted, we stood all over them carefully to push them into the mix and soil.
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I then took some dry cement and brushed this over the top and into the gaps before sprinkling a hose over the top. The moisture mixed with the cement and set quite quickly.
All that was left was to brush off the excess and Hey Presto!!
SO, What do you think??? Better than under swing matting I think. I’d love to know what you think, drop me a comment below!!
It certainly adds a bit of colour. The next test will be running the mower over it, hopefully we don’t have hundreds of brightly coloured missiles flying around.
The kids want to do step stones over the garden now but we will need to postpone that till we gather more bottle caps. So, what do you think of our butterfly?? I’d love it if you’d drop me a comment or email and let me know? The kids wouold be so happy!!
Dont forget to check this post out if you need even more inspirations for fun garden crafts, especially the Pony bead sun-catchers!!
Still need some inspiration for outdoor activities?? You can also download your own set of our activity cards. Perfect for any day of fun and adventure.
I love this idea!! The butterfly came out awesome!! I can’t wait to try this out!
It really did Emily. One of the kids thought the marks on the grass looked more like footprints so we almost changed to that but the colours for the butterfy worked out awesome.
The butterfly came out really beautiful! I think my child would really like to try this craft.
Thanks Joyce. Give it a go it was so much fun. X
What a fun way to reuse bottle caps! It looks awesome.
This is a wonderful idea.
I am going to try this in our parks new sensory garden.
Wish me luck, lol x
Best of Luck Michelle, let us know how you get on.