Nina Krinitsina, a pensioner from the Russian village of Makarye,
around 850 kilometers east of Moscow, has been decorating her modest
house with colorful bottle cap mosaics for the last seven years.
The amateur artist, who currently has over thirty plastic mosaics
nailed to the walls of her house – some numbering over 1,000 bottle caps
– was originally encouraged by her nephew. He would provide her with
grid designs downloaded from the internet, and she would piece them
together. She used peas at first, but quickly switched to a more
suitable material – plastic bottle caps. She obviously needed quite a
stock of caps of various colors to create all the designs, and she
didn’t shy away from visiting the local landfill in search of them.
“I don’t hide it, I go to the landfill in search of caps,” the artistically-inclined grandmother told Russian reporters. “Sometimes I find 100, 200 of them, other times, no more than 10. There are those who say that the village drunkard lives here, but as you can see, not a single wine cork or vodka bottle cap has been used.”
Krinitsina’s mosaics first went viral online in 2014, when pictures were shared on social media by Russian bloggers who spotted it when passing through Makarye, but she’s been at it ever since and now her portfolio numbers dozens of colorful mosaics. Most of the artworks are depictions of characters from Soviet cartoons and Russian folktales.
“It calms me down. Settles my nerves,” the artist said, adding that her home has become a local tourist attraction, with many families from the region bringing their children to marvel at her creations. Locals have even started donating plastic caps, but she still sources them herself as well.
“If I walk and see a bottle lying around and it is with a cap on it, then I unscrew the cap,” Nina Krinitsina said.
