"Recycle for Life" Project inspired by a visit to the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens

When you go with your family to the zoo, what is the first animal you would like to see? Pandas, zebras, lions, hippos, ostriches, elephants, flamingos, or maybe alligators? The Cincinnati Zoo is one of my favorite places to visit during the summer. It has been named the greeniest zoo in the nation and they are coming up with more ideas for protecting our environment. "Recycle for Life" was inspired by the idea of the zoo caring so much for our environment and also thinking of new ways to save it. When I put together a painting/collage for this inspiration, I came up with using: fiskars scissors, a 16 X 20 canvas, wooden circle coasters, newspaper, glue gun, black chalk coasters, acrylic paints, wooden letters and shapes, mod podge, a brush, and tissue paper. This project takes a longer amount of time only because it is on a larger canvas. In this painting/collage, I put a lot of time and effort because I believed in what they were doing at the zoo. I felt I expressed my feelings about how I was impressed about the zoo and its involvement in caring for the environment.

To start with this project, you need a 16X 20 canvas, scissors, tissue paper, black chalk coasters, newspaper, wooden circle coasters, a brush, and mod podge. You will take your scissors and cut the different colored tissue paper into small squares. When all of the tissue paper is cut into small squares, you start by decoupaging the canvas with tissue paper squares and letting the tissue paper dry within a couple of hours. When the canvas is dry, you can move onto decoupaging the newspaper in the center of the canvas and the black chalk coasters with the center being visible. After the decoupage on the coasters are dry, take a glue gun, attach both the chalk and wooden coasters, and begin to put your acrylic paints together.

For the painting part of my recycle theme, I decided to paint the animals, the types of recycling materials, the wooden heart with symbols, and the letters for each category. The recycling categories were: glass, aluminum, paper, and plastic. Each black chalk coaster has the material painted on it along with title. The wooden circle coasters have the animals painted on them- alligator, ostrich, panda, and hippo. On the wooden heart, it has an acrylic pouring of pink, red, and white with the letters and symbols at the bottom. The title on the heart says, "Recycle for Life" because the zoo and the world will have to continue to recycle in order to protect our environment for the future.

When putting this painting/collage together, you constantly need scissors for the tissue paper and newspaper. Always be ready to find something else to cut with the scissors. Without the scissors, this project would not be as easy or possible able to do. This is a big project with scissors, so be prepared to use them quite a bit.

My visit, to the Cincinnati Zoo, is what brought this inspiration. I am very glad it came all together in the end. It was challenging and it made me think more about it as each item was placed on the canvas. If you like to go to the zoo, it is a wonderful place to go for inspiration as an artist. I seem to get inspired everytime I go. "Recycle for Life" just happens to be one of my inspirations that expresses my strong support of the greeniest zoo in our nation. If there is a zoo near you, try to go for a visit. It might inspire you, as much as, it inspired me.