How To: Pop Top Peace Sign

My mom is an elementary school teacher and has developed an obsession with cool peace signs for her classroom. When discussing a how to project this week, she asked me to make her a peace sign out of recycled materials. You guys know I’m all about fun wall art like the Laundry Cup Wall Art, Newspaper Art, and Burlap Chevron Paintings— so I was totally pumped to take on this challenge!  After searching around the house, I grabbed a cardboard box they had left over from moving and a bag of pop-tops that my grandma had collected. Here’s how to make your very own pop top peace sign!

What You Will Need:

1. Cardboard– you could use an old box, a pizza box, etc.

2. Pop Tops.

3. Scissors or a razor blade.

4. Hot glue/hot glue gun.

5. Pencil.

How To Do It:

1. Draw a peace sign on your cardboard. I used a bowl to make the circle and then used a ruler to draw the rest.

My peace sign looked like this:

2. Cut out your peace sign. I first used scissors to cut it out, but I realized that using a razor blade would be much quicker. It’s up to you to choose which one, but please be careful if you decide to use a razor blade.

3. Start gluing your pop tops to your peace sign. (Warning: Work quickly! Pop tops are aluminum, so your hot glue will heat up the entire pop top–not just the place you’re putting the glue– causing your fingers to burn! I know from experience, unfortunately.) I turned the peace sign over to the cardboard side, instead of the white side shown above, because I wanted to hide as much of the cardboard as I could. I started gluing the pop tops in the middle section first to make sure everything was as even as I could get it. You will notice that I cut some of the pop tops in half in areas where I ran out of room. This is what the first layer of pop tops looked like:

4. I didn’t like how you could still see the cardboard, so I put another layer of pop tops on it. Don’t put the second layer directly on top of the first one– vary it a bit so it really fills in the gaps.

Now your peace sign is ready to be hung up!

I love it’s shiny qualities and that we didn’t buy a plastic or paper one from the store. Plus, if peace signs aren’t your thing, you could make other fun shapes as well.

What are some shapes that you would like to make for your wall? If you make your own pop top wall art, share a picture of it on our Facebook wall or link to your project in the comment section below!