Organizing and Displaying your Children's Artwork
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We have a lot of artwork in our home. My kids draw and paint at school, at home and at art class. I'm always working on the method to the madness and currently my method is the following:
My kids present me with their art. This art can be clipped on their wire in the hallway for immediate display (from Ikea) Some pieces make it to the framed gallery we have going down the hall to their rooms. The frames here are a mix of Aaron Brothers, Ikea and Michaels frames with acid free colored poster board or paper as mats. My kids also have access to blue painters tape which sometimes they use to put artwork in their room or closet. Artwork can also be placed in their completed art file (or on top of their art desk if it is an oversized item). They each have their own little filing boxes.
These are simply cardboard boxes from Ikea that are divided into two because they used to be cardboard drawer units. These two divided sections are labeled still working and complete. We'll go through the boxes together every so often to clean them out, decide what to recycle, what to remember to finish, and what to keep. The artwork they want to keep will get photographed for their art album. I then decide if we really want to keep it. If it's a keeper, it gets filed away in their artwork box in a closet.
This box seems to hold the first 5 years worth of art. I've recently bought my six year old a new one. I'm kinda bummed because of course Ikea no longer carries the cool cardboard boxes with the window and I have to settle on a regular (green of course) box. Maybe they have them but are out every time I drive to my closest Ikea, THREE and a HALF hours away (yes the half counts when you have three kids).
Someday I plan to take all the pictures of each kid's artwork and make a photo book, perhaps to be shared at their first gallery opening. (There's that bubble again, please don't pop it.)