Tutorial: Displaying Kids Artwork

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Kids create a lot of paper.  Whether you homeschool, your kids go to public school, or your kids are not school-aged yet, they still make a lot of paper.  Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore all the art my own kiddos make, but I cannot stand the world of clutter.  I feel superbly guilty each time I sneak something into the trash when they're not looking.  Yeah,  I'll admit it, I totally do that.  I want to celebrate my kids' desires to create, and I love watching their drawing get better and more complicated the older they get, but I needed a better solution.  And here's what I came up with.

To do this, you'll need:

• 3 framed cork boards (I found mine at Hobby Lobby)
• paint
• a computer
• pushpins
• scissors
• sharpie

First, I grabbed my boards and realized that those wood frames weren't going to match the colors in my house so I painted the frames black.

Whenever I'm painting or I have the kids doing a messy project, I just lay down a trash bag on the table.  It keeps the table clean and I can still use the trash bag later. 

I knew I wanted to add a letter to each board so they were personalized to my kiddos.  I went to the computer and printed a letter n cardstock in a font I liked.  My letters are about 5 inches tall.  (It's very easy to measure the height of letters if you're using PowerPoint).  Then, I cut out all the black part of the letters leaving me with a stencil to use.  Make sure you keep the little black parts that are separate if you're doing a letter like R, you'll need it.

I put my stencil on my cork board where I wanted it and used a pencil to traced the outline of the letter.  Then I used some paint to paint the letters.  I needed two coats to cover the cork board completely.

Once the letters dried, I used a sharpie to outline them to give them a crisp finish.

I was going to stop here but I wanted to add something more so I made these little pennant pieces in PowerPoint.  I printed them on cardstock, glued them around a piece of white embroidery floss, and then wrapped the ends around two push pins at the top of the boards to make a little bunting at the top.

Here's a close up of the graphic I used for the bunting.

You can find the document for my bunting printable here for free!  Just cut on the black lines, fold, and glue.

The fun thing about these is that they change daily.  We're always adding and taking stuff down and the kids LOVE seeing their hard work on display.  Poor Gunner doesn't have a lot up there yet, but he's getting better at having an attention span for coloring ;).

Conquering the paper clutter, one cork board at a time!