Create Your Own Kids’ Art Gallery!

Create Your Own Kids’ Art Gallery!

‘The important thing is to create’.

Pablo Picasso

Perhaps that’s so, but as the end of the academic year rapidly approaches, parents brace themselves for a mountain of children’s artwork and school/nursery papers!

What should we do with it all? There are countless possibilities for organising and storing kids’ work — here are a few suggestions to pick and choose from…

Organising

1. Pick out favourite pieces — write your child’s name and the year on the back

2. Select a few to give to grandparents, aunts or uncles

3. Consider quietly discarding the rest

Storing

1. Displaying kids’ creations

• A small ‘clothesline’ with items pegged up is a lovely and inexpensive way to display the artwork in a playroom or kids’ bedroom
• Wall-mounted pinboards or clipboards have the advantage of keeping the area under control, encouraging kids to regularly rotate what is on display
• Clip frames can be picked up at the supermarket, are a simple way to display your favourite pieces and can be super easy to update
• For a lasting display of a precious creation, consider canvas wall art or photo gifts such as mugs, bags or mousemats
• Scan a picture and use the image on personalised notecards or notebooks to use throughout the year

2. Filing hard copies

• Expandable artist portfolios take up very little room and comfortably accommodate larger items
• A ring binder of polypockets (or a display book with plastic pockets) is inexpensive and easy to assemble, keeping everything neat and close to hand for future viewing
• Plastic or patterned storage boxes — nice and simple!
• A good old-fashioned scrapbook is lovely to flick through

3. Filing digital copies — take photos of your child’s masterpieces then pick and choose from the following. This option works particularly well when it comes to 3D creations!

• Photobooks are a great way of storing and sharing memories
• A simple digital library on your computer (backed up to the cloud or an external device). One folder per year means filing the images couldn’t be easier
• Create a Pinterest board (you can make it secret) with photos of kids’ artwork — doing it via the app ensures it is quick, easily updated throughout the school year and readily accessible. Not to mention it takes up no physical room and it is free — what’s not to love?! If at a later date the kids get their own Pinterest accounts, you can give them access too
• Set up a kids’ artwork album in your smartphone’s Photos app. Items can be shared with family or friends and favourites used to create books or prints
• Apps such as Artkive or Arkiver allow you to collect and curate photos and other memories
• If you do family yearbooks, perhaps intersperse family photos with a few snaps of the kids’ artwork from throughout the year, particularly if they are seasonal

Whichever methods you choose, I recommend keeping a digital back-up of your favourite pieces in case the original copies get damaged or destroyed by fire or flood. It can also be worth doing a purge of artwork once or twice a year to keep it from getting out of hand.

This is the first in a three-part series of blogs to help parents prepare for the school holidays. If you want to breeze the end of term prep, check out https://www.betterorganised.uk/blog/how-to-breeze-the-end-of-term-prep/ and for family travel tips from a professional organiser, take a look at https://www.betterorganised.uk/blog/organise-family-travel-like-a-pro/

Better Organised is a professional organising business based just outside Glasgow. Head to Amazon to order your copy of A Better Organised Home in 30 Days! For regular tips, advice and product recommendations, sign up for the Better Organised newsletter at www.betterorganised.uk