Kid Art Garland DIY

Here’s the dilemma in our house:  I love art.  I love for my kids to love art.  I love for my kids to make art.  I do not love piles and piles of art paper and projects and creations in piles everywhere.  Were pretty simple in our home.  We try to limit what comes into our house because A) Our house is small and B) We don’t want our life to be about stuff.  We try and keep only things we need or really love so piles and piles of paper don’t cut it around here.  Josh Kelley doesn’t like piles and neither do I…and we’re neither too sentimental…even about our kids’ stuff…so we toss/recycle a lot.

About once a week I make a sweep through the house to toss art papers, drawings, paintings, watercolors, etc.  If the kids love their creation they know they can keep it in their room or hang it up.  If it’s just something crazy incredible like a little drawing and note from Harper from 2 years ago that said, “I love you so, so much.  More then a thalsen stars.” well I keep that little thing.

Solomon has been on a paper snowflake kick and asked if they could all hang together.  I strung them all together and hung them on our chalkboard.  While doing my regular sweep I had about 5 million watercolor papers because Amon can tear through some watercolor paper.  The big kids had some brightly colored ones in the mix too.  I decided instead of recycling all of them I’d make a couple of paper garlands out of them.

So easy.  All I did was use my circle paper punch (any shape punch will do) and cut out a bunch of circles from their paintings.  I like to fold the paper into 1/4s so I make less punches and it takes less time.

I decided to make two strands…one more colorful one I’ll use for later and then Amon’s more drearyish/”I smear all my watercolors together” strand to go with Sol’s snowflakes.  I simply ran them through my sewing machine.  If you do not have a sewing machines you could string them together with a needle and twine or my favorite, just hot glue them together or to a piece of string.

That’s it.  So now I technically kept their art, but just re-purposed it instead of recycling all of it.

Solomon’s birthday is soon and asked for a birthday countdown the other day.  I watched as Josh Kelley started erasing our niece Campbell’s big birthday chalkboard I drew…then he decided to repurpose too.  He did a little re-filling in and then made some additions.  Cracked me up.  And I like him.  And his dad ways.

Happy Tuesday.

PS: I’m still sending out emails about the Swaziland Africa trip.  So feel free to email me at pitterpatterart at gmail dot com and I send more information your way!