Georgetown 5th graders have been working on a large group project – our Chihuly Chandelier! After viewing the beautiful glass pieces created by artist Dale Chihuly, we began collecting water bottles for our own Chihuly inspired project.
Chihuly Glass Chandelier
Our water bottles are colored with permanent markers, cut into spirals, and then hot glued to a PVC pipe base.
As you can see…we have more bottles to add to our project. As they work, our 5th graders have been discussing where they could display their project in our building. The rotunda has their vote…our custodian Mr. Rob may have to put his thinking cap on to accomplish this task!
Future home of our G-Town Chihuly?
Extra thanks and a shout-out to GEMMEN’S Hardware for the special teacher deal on our PVC pipe, you guys rock!
Stay tuned for a look at our finished piece…on display somewhere at Georgetown.
Great project! Wondering how you attached the bottles to the pvc pipe? And how did you hang this?
Would love more details, so that I can start a project like this with my kiddos.
Thanks, Kerry – my kiddos loved this project. The bottles are attached to the pvc pipe with hot glue – we kept the lids on the water bottles, and I just hot glued them to the pipe as the kids finished each bottle. The bottles stick straight out from the pipe, giving it more width and volume. It took a lot of hot glue, but they stuck on just fine. I think the pipe is about 4 or 5 inches in diameter and 6 feet long, so it took a bunch of bottles. We saved the longer cut up bottles for the bottom of the pipe to cover the hole when it was hung; I also hot glued a few bottles inside the bottom hole to help cover it. We drilled two holes near the top of the pipe and strung heavy duty wire through the holes and twisted it to make a hanger. It is really not too heavy – maybe about 15 pounds. Our awesome custodian hung this piece using lots of brainpower and a lift to get him up into our very high rotunda! Hope that helps a bit. It really was just one giant experiment; we sort of had a plan and were pleasantly surprised that it worked out so well!