Waste-Free Wednesday: Reusing Your Child's Artwork
Waste-Free Wednesday
For this week’s edition of Waste-Free Wednesday, I’m tackling my daughters’ art box. No sooner could my girls put pen to paper then my walls suddenly were papered in their sketches, drawings, painting, and doodles. Once I ran out of wallspace, I needed to figure out a way to get the most mileage from their most prized pieces. Sure, grandma will always love a stack of artwork as a gift, but why not make it even more creative and useful with these tricks:
- Framed art: Pick up second-hand frames from the thrift store to display artwork.
- Ornaments: Make holiday ornaments and decorations by trimming artwork and laminating if necessary.
- Coasters: Pick up clear glass or plastic coasters from a second-hand store and tape portions of your child’s artwork to the backside.
- Mobiles: Make paper cubes out of your child’s artwork and hang pieces at different lengths from a hangar.
- Bottled-Up Art: Roll of the artwork and gently insert into a clean, clear bottle. Unroll the piece for display in the bottle.
- Cards: Use the backside of art-work as is for personalized stationary to send letters and notes to family and friends. Or get creative and make cards from artwork to send out on special occasions.
- Wrapping Paper: Use your child’s art to wrap presents.
- Pencil Holders:
Glue drawings around a clean, recycled metal can to make a keepsake pencil holder. - Mouse Pad: Laminate your child’s paintings to create a personalized mouse pad.
- Line-Art: Hang artwork on a clothesline or across your fence on a sunny day.
- Books: Staple several pieces of your child’s artwork together into a book.
- Kiddie Gallery: Cover a large cardboard box inside and out with your child’s artwork and cut holes on both sides so kids can crawl through and observe the art.
What creative ideas have you come up with for sharing, reusing, and recycling your child’s artwork?
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Digital art doesn’t waste paper. My kids use MS paint to create a kind of virtual paper doll file. If they use a white background and always save as a bmp they can make more and more ‘clothes’ to dress their doll with. It’s pretty cool.
I love the idea of using artwork for so many different uses. The mouse pad is a wonderful idea. I just found your blog and I wanted to say it’s great. I’m always looking for ways to better parent my baby & this is really top notch info. Making uses out of my baby girl’s artwork should definately make my child feel great. This also helps to keep the baby-parent relationship strong, and grow stronger.
I’ve heard of people using their child’s artwork to create a star ceiling. Pretty cool ideas.
One thing I remember doing with the kids’ artwork was mounting them on poster board, laminating, and using for place mats. The other thing we did once was mounting a Christmasy masterpiece and cutting it into enough pieces to use as an Advent puzzle. We had covered a large piece of living room wall with cork squares to use as a gallery of their work and every day before Christmas we added a piece of the puzzle.
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How about attaching them to gifts for family and close friends? My sister lives overseas and when one of our kids has a birthday they sometimes get a gift of artwork made by their cousins.
Awesome ideas. My son has so much great art that I can’t part with. These are really cute ideas and I can’t wait to start these projects. His grandparents will benefit as well…great gift ideas
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