Queen portrait created out of 1,600 used coffee pods

Residents at a sheltered housing complex in Gloucestershire spent five weeks creating the mosaic using 1,634 recycled coffee capsules

Sheltered housing residents have used hundreds of spent coffee pods to create a portrait of The Queen.

Residents at Wallace House in Hatherley, Gloucestershire, spent five weeks creating the mosaic using 1,634 recycled coffee machine capsules.

Carol Gatter, who runs the craft club, said she did not initially tell the group what they were working on.

She said: "I'd been telling them that it was a nude of myself so I think they were relieved that it was the Queen."

The craft group spent two hours a week for five weeks to create the portrait from recycled coffee capsules

Ms Gatter, who has only just started the group, said she had wanted to "start off with something really exciting".

She said: "I thought 'Let's go big' and the only way we can do a mosaic is to go very large.

"But I didn't realise that used Nespresso pods still have their coffee in them.

"So they've all been emptied out by myself and now my garden smells lovely."

Residents said they had no idea what the artwork, created in nine separate sections, was of until it was put together

About 2,500 single-serving coffee pods were donated to the group and had to be cleaned out by hand

With 2,500 donated single-serving coffee pods cleaned out "for the colours", it then fell to residents to create the monarch's likeness to celebrate her 90th birthday.

Working two hours a week for five weeks, resident Pat said she had "really enjoyed" creating the completely-recycled artwork.

"It's in nine separate parts so until you put it all together you couldn't tell what it was going to be," she said.

"So we didn't actually know until the last week - but it's just magic, basically."