Punk Rock DIY: Displaying the kids' art

- - - -What is "Punk Rock DIY"?

Punk Rock DIY is do-it-yourself projects like recycled art and creative, environmentally and kid friendly home improvement. - - - -

My refrigerator is papered with kids' artwork, awards, pictures, concert tickets, and whatever other creations will fit. I try to sort through it every once and again to clean it off, particularly when the magnets are unable to hold everything they are endeavored to. Once I take the time to clean it I recycle some things, put some things away in scrapbooks, and I am usually left with a couple of drawings or paintings that I like too much to put away. Since the surface area of the front of my fridge started to look like real estate on the beach, I thought it might be time to figure out another venue for those works of art.

In the spirit of reduce-reuse-recycle I decided to try and complete this project without purchasing anything new. So that meant rummaging and wandering around the house trying to find inspiration. I found it in my tool box and my sewing box.

My first (and probably most prominent) inspiration was found in my sewing box- a bag of miniature clothes pins, some yarn, and some leftover black ribbon. I found a lot of yarn and only a little ribbon, but the ribbon looks a bit more polished- so the ribbon wins.

The clothespins sealed the deal- I knew I wanted to do something like a clothesline (and art-line maybe?), but what to hang it on? In my tool box I found a bunch of cup hooks, ranging from super little to way too big. Hmm…time to get to work.

After carefully measuring and marking the wall (I cut the length of the ribbon in half and used it to measure- always measure twice!) I was able to easily twist the little cup hooks into the wall.

At first I just tied the ribbon onto the hooks but the ends of the ribbon hung vacantly off to the side, so I tied each end into bows, and then knotted the ribbon around the hooks.

(I tried this two ways: I tied the bows first and then tied the knots around the hooks, and I tied the knots first and then tied the ends into bows. For the sake of cute bows I think it was easier to tie the bow first and then tie the string into a knot around the hook- otherwise the bows were smooshed and hard to reshape.)

The finished product:

My art-lines are a success and have cleared up some new real estate on my refrigerator, but I still have more art to hang! I have to give equal representation to all the kids in my life, so I need more gallery room. Stay tuned for the next installment of Punk Rock DIY to see me wrestle with a creative way to reuse bulletin boards.