Our older son loves to draw and make crafts. He’s forever creating new masterpieces, and his little brother is starting to follow in his footsteps (although for now, we’re still working on convincing him that paper makes a better canvas than the floors and windowsills…).
For a while, we had artwork stuck all over the fridge with magnets. But while I loved the pictures, I didn’t like having the front of my fridge covered in paper. Sort of like kitchen counters, I like the fridge to be a clean surface. So I started looking for places where we could hang up an artwork wire, and I decided that the landing of the stairs to the basement would be perfect. So this is what we have now:
We’ve had it there for a few months, and our son loves it. He can add his own pictures since it’s at a level he can reach, and we can all see his artwork from the living room and when we’re on our way downstairs.
The wire was from a spool that we already had in the garage, and I just used regular clothespins that I already had. The wire is attached to a pair of medium size screw eyes on the ends – and we also had those already. So we did this whole project in about 15 minutes, using supplies that we already had on hand.
I know that there are tons of similar ideas out there – I’m definitely not the first blogger to come up with something like this. But I could have gotten a lot fancier and spent a lot of money on this project. I could have bought special wire and clips, but I decided to just make it with what we already had. And our son loves it just the way it is. It doesn’t matter to him that the clips are from the clothesline and that the wire is from our garden supplies – he just loves that he can hang his artwork up for everyone to see it.
Remember that it’s ok to think outside the box when it comes to all those fabulous ideas on Pinterest. You might find that you can create something similar without spending money on supplies if you’re willing to “shop” around your house and garage to find supplies.
BigMama says
We are retired now, but raised four children. They were, also, always making artwork. We moved several times over the years, and keeping and moving artwork was not reasonable.
So each time we moved, my husband would put a piece of wafer wood or plywood on the wall (size dependent on wall space), and then any new artwork would be put up with staples. When the wooden “wall” was full, we would take some photos, then remove and get rid of the art. We have lovely photos of all that work, and my now-grown “babbies” love going though our photo boxes when they visit..
We also framed the best of their work, and have these on the walls of our house.