You can admit it. I admit that I do it regularly. I usually do it at night when the kids are in bed. I go downstairs ever so quietly and I leaf through the piles upon piles of artwork. I am ruthless. What doesn’t make the cut goes directly into the garbage, the one in the garage, the night before garbage day. I learned the hard way that being sneaky is the only way to accomplish this task successfully. I have to do this or else our home would be overrun with multi-coloured construction papers adorned with poms-poms. Don’t get me wrong. I love that my boys take the time to create artwork and I don’t want to stifle their creativity but there has to be a limit on the amount of masterpieces one can keep. Even the Louvre has limitations!
I have come up with a solution how to showcase a few of my favourite pieces. The boys enjoyed this activity, it doesn’t cost a lot of money and the final result is really special.
At the end of week, month or school year, sit down with your little one and have them choose their favourite pieces of artwork. Because I am somewhat of a control freak and my boys are still young enough, I do an edit of the pile before hand.
Once the selections have been made, place each piece into a frame of its own. Ikea has these perfect frames made from plastic and cardboard. What I love about these frames is that your kids can easily put their art into it without much interference from you. There is no glass upon which little fingers can be cut or expensive frames that can be dropped.
We have decided to hang a series of frames in each of the boys’ rooms but I think that they would look good in a playroom too.
Do you have any ideas for how to showoff your child’s artwork without turning your house into a full-blown gallery?
4 Mothers 
We have gotten into the habit over the past year of scanning most of our kid’s artwork, so we can look at our “collection” together in pictures. We have then put some of the scanned artwork in our family albums (we try to make yearly photobooks) so it’s a great way to keep some of the great pieces without the bulk. We will showcase a couple of “best of’s” on our magnet board like our first family picture!) but otherwise our approached has allowed us to keep the memory of the art without the clutter 🙂
Such a great idea! These books would be a very easy way to chronicle their school years too because pictures of them and their friends could be incorporated too. I am going to try this for Jack’s JK year. Thanks, Mireille!
We also scan E’s artwork and then display it on one of those digital frames (we have it set up in our living room). We have loaded it up with pictures of our kids and “favourite people” in our lives as well as the scans of the artwork. Whenever one of his art pieces comes up on the frame E often pauses and looks at it – I think he finds it fun to see his work “on screen”.
Love it! Who wouldn’t love seeing their work projected in the digital frame. Thanks to you and Mireille, I now have two new ways to showcase the boys’ work!
Our boys’ artwork goes through several stages. First it sits in the “art box” for a while till I get around to going through it. Then I let the boys pick their top 5-10, depending on how much time and energy I feel like putting into it that day, and I tack them up in random spots around their room, in the hallway, and even near our dining table (we’re a very casual family). After they’ve hung out there for a while, they get whittled down to the best of the best. Those lucky few get hung on a yarn clothesline suspended above the boys’ closet for up to a year. When that gets full and needs refreshing, those art items get scanned and saved on our external hard drive used just for photos. Then I upload just their artwork to their own Diego themed photo frame that sits in their room. They love it!
I have been wanting to do a clothesline of their artwork in their rooms. Thanks for reminding me!