Three Best Ways to Store your Child's Art

What is the best style to store your child'due south artwork? I have 3 tried-and-true ideas for you that I know will work.

Children are prolific producers of stuff. From their first drawings of a real person, to restaurant doodles, to the piles of art that come home from school, it's hard to know what to do with it all. If y'all are a throw-awayer, and so there'south no real problem hither. You can officially end reading! Merely if you are a saver, like me, you lot have to implement a sorting and storing system before things go unruly.

My sorting system looks something similar this:

Imagine that I am making piles.

The first pile is for pieces I want to frame or hang up.

The second pile is for keepsakes and fine art pieces I want to relieve.

The 3rd pile is for collage material (things that can be cut up and used in art grade).

And the quaternary pile is very full and volition disappear forever (distressing, 80th drawing of the New York Rangers logo).

We can get rid of two piles hands—the collage fabric pile goes off to a box in the fine art room, and the trash pile gets trashed.

Now we are left with two piles. Realistically, that "to frame" pile could sit down and collect dust forever. Information technology might exist improve to tape these pieces upwards or hang them on a clothesline right away. Yous can always get back and frame them later. (My volume has a wonderful section on displaying your child'southward art.)

Now we are left with the 'to salve' pile of artwork. What is the best way to store these keepsakes? Here are some suggestions that volition work for yous.

STORAGE Thought ONE: PAPER Bag PORTFOLIOS

I make portfolios from paper bags for my students. At the end of each session, I send them home with their portfolios total of art, condom stamped with their names. Sometimes we decorate the portfolios, too.

You can keep the sides of the portfolios open, or you can tape them closed like a pocket. You lot can assign one portfolio per year, or simply make full as yous become and write the dates on the front end.

I astonishing notice that I discovered was this folded magazine stand up that I utilise to house the portfolios during the year. I just love the size and summit and the way it'south so easy for the kids to become into their ain portfolios and add their work-of-the-day.

Read more than about how I make these paper handbag portfolios. One mom of twins in my art class says that after her child's portfolio is full at home, she and then puts them into a large plastic sweater box. Which leads me to my next storage thought…

STORAGE IDEA Ii: Large BOXES

Saving artwork in boxes is the most logical idea. Boxes can be moved around hands, can be sorted by yr, can be piled on top of each other, and tin can be bought with acid-free, archival linings. I bought our crimson ones years ago and can't seem to find the long ones anymore. Merely hither'due south what you lot tin buy:

~ Smaller ones only like the cherry ones above which are 13″ x xiv″. Dandy for almost daily art.

~ Ikea always has skillful boxes in sets of three, the polka-dot ones in a higher place are from there.

~ Or these gorgeous acid-free boxes which are expensive but large and can probably concord a lifetime of art.

Keeping the boxes closeby, similar in an office or a family room, is primal because there are things to salvage almost daily, it feels like.

If you're wondering, this big blue box came from a fancy children's wearable store nigh 18 years ago. Someone bought a gift for my baby girl (who is now 18) and this beautiful bluish box arrived at my firm! I don't remember the gift, but the box is still 1 of my all-time and most cherished boxes, and has stored all of her artwork from toddlerhood to center schoolhouse.

STORAGE IDEA THREE: CHEST OF DRAWERS

This is how my mom used to store all of our keepsakes. Each of her iii children had a drawer in an old dresser. How simple and practical is that? She was very liberal with the trash can, so by the time I was xviii the drawer was but almost halfway full. Inside the drawers were our report cards, a few essays, some artwork, some photos, a playbill, some ticket stubs, and perchance a favorite well-loved shirt.

I admire the way she didn't bother sorting it separately, and that she kept only the about important things. I save fashion too much, and I split up schoolwork from artwork from remembrances. Simply I exercise use her chest of drawers technique for saving art. Information technology simply makes sense. The big drawers fit every size of art, and it'due south just a very easy system. Even easier than boxes!

(That chest of drawers in a higher place is actually the i my mom used growing upward! She handed it down to me a few years agone.)

It's possible that you might have a chest of drawers in your house that you can clear out and use today! If non, I highly recommend the Alex drawers from Ikea. I use mine in our art room and store newspaper in the tiptop drawers, and so artwork in the lesser. I dear that the drawers are on casters, too.

Get my Art Class poster here!

Little ones can easily open the Alex drawers and add artwork that is of import to them.

Although sorting and saving is loads of work, in that location are many great advantages to beingness so caring and diligent about archiving your children's artistic life. Every bit the family historian, you are preserving their creative voyage, and ane day your children will expect through the pieces you saved and feel then proud and accomplished and worthy and loved. And perhaps they will share them with their own child. You lot are creating a tradition of saving art, and you are sending the message to your kid that art is valuable

I do retrieve it's okay to throw fine art away under your children'south watchful eye. Editing is a life skill that they should learn. It's expert to sort things with them then that they sympathize the deviation between what'due south important and what is redundant.

Something I honey to practise with all of my children's artwork is to hang it up in chronological order—with a photo of them at that age—on a clothesline for their birthday. It stays up for a few weeks so that friends and family unit can run into their creative journey. It's my favorite altogether tradition.

And but in case yous are wondering, yes I utilise all 3 of these ideas! The portfolios are for my art students, the drawers are for artwork that I might hang up or frame, and the boxes are for forever pieces.

Permit me know of whatever ideas that you lot utilise to sort and store art. I would love to hear!

xo, Bar

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Source: https://www.artbarblog.com/three-best-ways-to-store-your-childs-art/

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