“Art” Fully Displayed

​We are all creative beings and nurturing that creative aspect of ourselves is very important.  Creativity provides another way for us to express our thoughts and feelings beyond words and enables us to think in different ways and come up with interesting solutions to a situation or problem.  If you’ve ever heard a child explain their actions, you’ll definitely see that type of thinking at work.
Children produce a lot of art and my children are no exception.  At this point, my eldest “K” is really getting into art and she’s got paint, markers, watercolor pencils, colored paper, stamps, you name it.  On a daily basis, she’s churning out several “masterpieces” and now, my middle child is also starting to take an interest and mimic her older sister.  In fact, my laundry room is now a designated art room, I just happen to do laundry in there!

​I certainly want to foster and honor my children’s creativity, but it’s also important to me that I manage all the products of their creativity.  While the sentimental part of me wants to keep everything my children produce, times that by three and I’d soon be swimming in mounds of drawings, paints, crafts, you get the picture.  On top of what I was already doing, I wanted to research other ideas to help me manage their creative outputs.

​Regardless of the medium and whether you decide to keep their art or not, I recommend taking a picture or scanning it if possible. Write the name, the date the art was produced, and a description of what it is. Over time, that piece of work could get erased (think whiteboard or chalkboard and Doodle Pro), colors may fade, papers may rip and if you have a human tornado like my E, you may get creative additions from either the original artist or someone else!

Now that you have a digital copy and an original, there are a lot of different options for display. Here are some of the ideas that I really like!

​Instead of framing a number of artistic pieces, especially if you don’t have a lot of walls or a large living space, a collage might be a good way to display all your little one’s work (at least some of the more memorable ones).  You can use Photoshop or another photo editing programs to create a collage of artwork.  Many smartphone applications can also help you create collages and add frames and other fun embellishments. We are uploading our photos automatically to our Google account so I use Picasa for both storing as well as creating a collage.

My family already creates photo books as a way to revisit special memories throughout the year as well as major trips that we take. The girls always love to take the books and flip through them. I like to use Shutterfly to do my photo books and actually, there is a template called “Mini-Masterpieces” that was designed by Paislee Press for showcasing children’s artwork. The picture above is one that she made for her daughter’s work!  I like this idea because you can highlight a lot of different art pieces in a compact way, mix and match them with some actual pictures of your “artist” and create a cool artistic product of your own!

​While these are not so common outside anymore, you can borrow this concept to hang your children’s artwork.  You can do it from bare basics to a very fancy hanging design it’s really up to your preference.  Here I’ve used a storage chain to hang up the girl’s work.

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​If you do have a wall space to spare, you could designate a wall to be their “gallery”. Another great space that you could utilize for the gallery is the staircase (if you do have one). Go crazy with your frames in terms of size, color, design, and even the arrangement of the frames themselves. You could buy a number of the same frames and do a number of things with them. As an example, from Grey Luster Girl, you can see that there is no glass but a piece of corkboard that you can take up the piece of the month! If a theme emerges, you can even ask the artist to write a few words about this collection!

With handy tools such as Command strips, you can have an awesome gallery and not worry about filling holes!

To make it more interesting you can incorporate a photo with a quote. I love the quote by Picasso: “Every Child is an Artist” which would work perfectly for the occasion. Here’s a free printable courtesy of Discovery Days and Montessori Moments. Or if you are a fan of Etsy, here are all the possible looks for this quote. Who knows, maybe it’ll inspire you to design your own!

Chalkboard walls go beyond the classroom. Many people use boards with special pens and markers to organize their homes from the kitchen to the bedroom. You can mix and match the wall with artwork, little notes, photos, and anything else that works for your life.  You can even get magnetic paint and attach clips if you don’t want to poke holes in your walls.
Have you seen this wall yet?  It’s gorgeous and would be an awesome wall for displaying artwork among other things!  If you want to know how it was created, check it out here