Organizing artwork

Lately, I have been in an organizing whirlwind.  A bystander might mistake it for nesting...but there are no more babies coming to this house.  I think I am liking order and structure in the midst of life with 3 children.  If I had an Ikea near me, I would have bought a million cute little boxes, file holders and baskets to finish this spring cleaning.  I will have to wait for my road trip through Atlanta this summer.  My shopping list is already getting pretty big - I can't wait!

Last week I got busy on the kid's art work.  Last time I was at Ikea, I picked up a few of these tension rod curtain hangers and have been using them to display artwork.

I have to brag a little on the kids...they are so creative!  Here is one my favorites from 4 year old Abby:

I think it is our family going into space.  I love how she designed the rocket.  If you ask her about the picture, the amazing thing is the story that would go with it.  She has a great imagination!



And here are 2 of my favorites from Caleb.  He does a lot of art at kindergarten.

The picture on the left is a self portrait.  Isn't it great?  My favorite is the picture on the right.  It is the inside of his brain.  How did he think of that????  Love it.

One of the things that is hard to keep organized is all of these lovely pieces of art.  We use to have drawings all over the house.  And of course, the kids don't want to throw away any of it.  So there are a few systems that I have created that have worked wonders.







The oldest system in place is this pegboard.  I got the idea from Pottery Barn many years ago, but I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for it.

My Dad helped me build this pegboard from left-over scraps from the workroom at our house.  The back is framed out with 1x2 boards.  The one in this picture is done beautifully with mitered corners (thanks to my Dad's carpentry skills).  The one hanging in the kitchen is done with squared edges (thanks to my fear of measuring and cutting angles).  I did buy the hooks and pencil holders at Pottery Barn but I don't think they would be too hard to make.







The next system I started was creating binders for the kids with their favorite artwork.  I have dividers within each binder, and clear page holders with their artwork.  I can't keep everything, but I am trying to keep some of my favorites.  Abby loves to get the binders down and flip through them.







With all of these methods of organizing art around the house, I still found lots of little pieces of paper EVERYWHERE!  I can't control the artwork that comes home from school, but I decided that I could control what we have around the house.  I purchased a sketch book for both of them (each with about 100 pages).  I made sure there wasn't any way to tear out the pages.  And I took away 95% of loose paper from around their craft area.  They both love it!  They like to go back and look at their drawings and even add to them.  When they fill up the book, I will label the date and purchase another one.

So that is what I have been doing in between laundry, dinner and diapers.  Having things organized keeps me sane.  You can usually tell when I am feeling more stressed by how much organizing I am doing.  The more busy I am, the more things get re-organized around the house.  Kind of ironic, I know.  And one day, this cute face is going to add to the art clutter.  I can't wait to see what he comes up with...

Rainy day fun times 2.

Abby and I spent most of today in our pajamas.  We loved it.  It was a rainy day and we had no where that we had to be.  Since we didn't have anything planned, we worked on a fun project for her room.  I actually did a 2 for 1, since we were painting anyways.  The house still smells like spray paint.

#1.  For Abby's room, we created a fun way to display her initials.  Last year Abby painted some paper mache letters a bright pink.  I have been thinking about displaying them more predominantly.  Since she sleeps in my childhood bed, my parents had recently given me an antique frame and picture that use to hang with the bed.  Sadly, the picture was ripped and torn after years of storage.  It has been ripped too far to be used with the antique frame.  So I decided to salvage the frame and keeps it's heritage alongside my antique brass bed.




I sprayed primer all over the frame before we got started.  I probably could have gone straight to the top coat but I didn't want to risk it.  For the top coat, I used a semi-gloss white spray paint.  Lately I have been using spray paint for projects and I really like it.  It is a lot faster!  And I don't see all of my mistakes from brush painting.

After it dried, we brought the frame inside and laid out the letters to make sure they fit.  And they just barely fit.  I gave Abby a choice of 3 ribbons - she quickly picked the pink polka-dot pattern.

We took a hot glue gun and attached the letters to the back of the frame.  We also undid the old wire from the back and attached a small hook for hanging the frame.  (what are those things called?  I have no idea...)








Abby was my big helper!  She even helped drill the screws into the back of the frame.  I want her to know how to use power tools at an early age.

Here is the frame hanging in Abby's room.  Abby couldn't wait to show Mark when he got home.

#2.  The side project was a little update to our weekly activity board.  I had hung an old white board in the kitchen a while ago and it just wasn't quite right.  It has been bothering me for a while.  It has functioned just fine but aesthetically it wasn't quite what I was going for.

So today, I took it down.  And, ummm, let me show you what is behind my activity board....

This house was wired with a 1960's intercom system that never worked.  So one day, I decided to take it out.  But I didn't really want to waste my time dry-walling because one day I want to re-do the kitchen.  So, I just covered it up.  I know...shame, shame.








I took the same spray paint primer and covered the white board.  Then I took my handy chalk-board paint, and gave it two coats.










Now I have a magnetic chalkboard that I love!  I have seen a lot of ideas around Pinterest on how to create a magnetic board.  Cookie sheets, plywood and scrap metal, etc.  I just wanted to use what I had on hand.

All in all...a very productive day!  And I didn't spend any money.  My one pint of chalkboard paint from 5 years ago is getting a lot of use lately!  Granted, the spray paint was a recent purchase.  But even for $8, these were low budget projects.  I love rainy days.