Displaying Preschool Artwork

What about getting some magnetic paint and doing the upper half of a wall either in a hallway or kitchen? That way you can maintain some of your "style" and have a fabulous gallery to display the precious art.

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I have 4 kids, and have done the same thing with all of them. We get a 3 ring binder at the beginning of every school year, and I fill it with page protectors. I then take their most important school work and art work, and put it in the page protectors within the binder. By the end of each year, each child has a book displaying what they have done during the year. I get the kind that has the clear plastic pocket on the front, back, and sides of the binder. I take a couple of pictures of them throughout the year with something they have made (especially the things that are either 3-dimensional or just too big to go in the binder). I then make a sort of "scrapbook page" using those pictures that slides into the front clear pocket (on the outside) to make a sort of cover for the binder. I then make a strip with their name, grade and/or age that goes in the pocket along the spine. That way, the kids can get their book off of the bookshelf at any time and look through it.

My oldest daughter who is now 10 1/2 LOVES to get her books from when she was younger down and look through them.

When they grow up and move out of the house, they can take their books with them and do whatever they want with them. If they decide to keep them, I'm sure their kids will love looking through them someday, too.

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I have not had many pieces of art from my kids yet. However I have heard a great idea. Take pictures. Then you can get rid of them and you could make an album of the pictures of the artwork!! Hope you get some good suggestions. I had just heard this one and thought it wasn't a bad idea.

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My kids each have a 3" 3-ring binder with sleeves to put their special art pieces in. My 5 yr old in particular generates massive amounts of "art."

We don't have a toddler/crawler in the house at the moment, but I got tired of the fridge art. It was completely covered, and when my son ran out of space, he'd hang the papers off the edges. Opening the door knocked the papers off. So we tried to think of another solution.

What we did is save up lids from frozen juice concentrate cans (this takes a long time!) and hot glue them to a big sheet of cardboard. I did this when I was painting the wall, so I just used the roller to paint the cardboard, then glue the lids on, then paint the lids. It's fairly unobtrusive because it's the same color as the wall. Then I used Command strips to mount it on the wall. It's a cheap, big magnetic board for all my boys' projects. Ours is down low, but you could hang it higher. It needs decently strong magnets so walking past it doesn't blow the papers off.

I also mounted a cork board (but you could find a magnetic one) with Command strips to the back of our pantry door. If you want it to show, you could do it on the front.

Someone had the idea to make scrapbook page display frames. You can get project directions here:
http://networkedblogs.com/p14344233

Because they're square, they had to buy custom frames. You could buy a large picture frame (especially a cheap one with no glass at a yard sale--there seem to be TONS of them!) and get some sheet metal cut to fit in it. I have no idea how much sheet metal costs, or how much to get it cut, but you could look into it. Come to think of it, I may do that myself!

Start now to scrapbook it! I've got a HUGE pile from my 3rd grader that I have to get under control. Now I've added a kindergartner who brings home daily projects. I've actually got a "kid art" wall of stuff I've laminated (w/laminating paper-like contac paper but actually clear), used a binder clip to hang on a thumb tack to prevent holes in the art. My boys love it!
I've decided to scrap what's too cute not to keep (my sister-in-law cut out parts of their favorite projects & scrapped just that part on the page) & take pictures of the rest. I'll have memories of all of their work, but do I really need to keep every drawing he brings home? Nope.
Let her know that you love all of her artwork but you'll hang it for a week & then put a new piece of art up in it's place-she can pick which one she wants up for display.

Just be frank with her. "Sweetie, I really want to keep this forever, it's so important to me. I was thinking maybe you and I can make a book of all your pictures, and that way we can hang your new ones up!"

I've also heard some mothers that keep a box of their child's artwork, and they set aside some of their favorites, and tell the child they're only allowed to keep the artwork they can fit in the box. I don't know if that works or not.

Lol, but I dunno if I'd listen to me. I have my kids' finger paintings put up on the walls in my livingroom.

My mother-in-law had this problem of where to display all the grandkids art, and found the idea to dedicate a wall in the garage completely to art work. She has one super cute garage wall now!

I have the same issue. I have a few items displayed on the wall and most in the closet. I have used a lot of the bigger paintings as wrapping paper, and that is really a great use of the work (but then it's gone.)

I don't have any good ideas about display, but someone suggested I take photos of the artwork and make a book of it at Shutterfly or some similar website. This seems like a great way to preserve some of it, since we really have a heap of artwork. Just a thought....

I'm thinking an art clothesline could be cute.

I take a picture of the artwork and then put it into a photobook on Shutterfly.com. Also, I have scanned the artwork in and had canvasses made that look awesome but are a bit pricey. Costco now does this service and it makes it look really cool.

S.,

You could get a scrapbook. Tell your daughter that you are keeping all of her artwork, but since she is such a good artist and you want to display all her art, you will put the existing work in the scrapbook so that you have a place to dispay her new work. When she is grown (say 20 years from now) she will be thrilled that you did this for her and she will have a great time rediuscovering her beautiful art!

E.

You have two talented children - one in art, and one in pulling ability. (I'm sure Cooper has talents, too.) My idea depends on how you like to decorate your house... but if there's a space in your kitchen, family room, or living room where you can display your daughters art, go ahead and make use of it. Make sure you can fasten the pictures high enough that the pint-size redecorator can't reach them, and make sure also that the room is large enough that your daughter can see her work clearly if she steps back a bit. If you'd like to make it fancier, take strips of simple painted moulding and constuct a "frame" on that area of the wall (large enough to accommodate several pictures) so that space becomes more like a gallery. Just a thought.

We have a small bulletin board specificly for kids' projects. When it is full, then we have to decide what to do with it. I know your question was about displayng art, but here are a few ideas about what to do when it needs to come down. It sounds like that is a challenge too. Take a picture of her with all her artwork and place the picture in a scrapbook! Start doing this with more of her projects (make it a fun, big, exciting deal) and she might start getting excited about this new way to remember and look back on all her projects. Make it her idea-just gently guide her along the way. Another idea is keeping one box per year for each child. At the end of each year, have the child pick a set # of favorites to keep in the box. And I don't remove any of my kids' projects until they are sleeping to avoid the drama. Half the time they don't notice anyways. Best wishes in trying something new!

Hi S.!

How awesome that you have so many great pieces of art to choose from. I LOVED my daughter's preschool for that reason.

We took a couple of her paintings that we liked really well and framed them with black matting and black frames and they look fantastic! Then with all the others, we lined the walls in the stairway to the basement. It was great because those walls were pretty blank and bare and all those pictures added such color and joy to them. There were also so many that there was no problem covering the walls really well.

Congratulations on having such a great little artist!

I have seen a couple of options for this problem. I used to hang my daughter's artwork on the cupboard fronts. At the beginning of a month, I would take it all down and start over again. It is great for decorating for the holidays! :)
My friend bought a couple of the clear poster frames and hung her son's artwork in those. She would change them out about every month. She had one hanging in her son's room and two in his playroom.
Hope this gives you some ideas.

If you want to be able to post a lot, get a bulletin board or a magnet board. They make really cute ones. Or get a few frames to put them in and use them as decor in her room. Another way I have seen is to get a string and put it up on her wall and hang them from it using clothes pins. Hope this helps!

We have a 2' x 3' cork board that we put up projects on. I call it the "Wall of Fame." We rotate the new ones in and remove the old ones. If you/your child loves them, take a photo. If they are super cute, mail them to out of town relatives, or you could make a "book" to give a grandparent for Christmas.

if you have a space on an empty wall, get a cute picture frame that matches your decor and display your daughters artwork like its an actual piece of art! Make it fun for her and make it a big deal when you transition to this...She can choose her favorite one for the week etc, and as she chooses new pictures just neatly store her others in a binder or scrapbook =) hope this helps

If you decide to do the taking picture route you could also purchase one of the digital picture frames and hang it up in your kitchen or her room or wherever and then it would cycle through all of her artwork. There will probably be some good deals on them after Thansgiving?

Ikea has some great plastic frames with clips that you can hook together and hang vertically or horizontally all different sizes for some fun I have taken some of my daughters *3.5 yrs* art and cut out the best parts and done some abstract modern art with it in the frames. it's really neat stuff--then I can hang it down from the ceiling and not even use up all the wall space with it in her room, the toy room or along any wall I want in the house.
I also do the art binder but we call it her portfolio. :) we put her artwork in the plastic sleeves in a 3" binder.
I throw stuff away too though. most of her preschool work goes in the garbage--I keep it if it is adorable but usually most of the art we keep is stuff she has done at home on her art table or on her easel.
My mom kept EVERYTHING and it was overwhelming when she gave me boxes of old school work when I was older. I ended up just tossing everything because it was too overwhelming to deal with that amount of stuff. helping your child pare it down when they are younger will be beneficial to them in life and keep you from keeping everything. when my older sis. felt guilty about chucking papers I told her the same thing other moms have suggested--hang up several pieces on the wall, take pictures of them and scrapbook that.
I don't want the clutter in my house and want to teach my daughter how to purge and not be cluttered as she is growing up as well. I wish I had been taught at a young age to really process what is truly sentimental and what is just stuff.
Good luck!
ps I love the can idea with circles for the magnet board! I'm really excited to try that out since I have a space in my daughter's room that I need to do something fun with, and we have a circle motif in there--

well we always took and hung them along the wall to the bathroom. this way everyone could see them and they were up to high for little fingers. they stayed there until new ones came home and then they got replaceed.