Were you inspired to encourage your children to create more art after reading Plume De Nikola's post Art Festival Time? A great reminder to not only allow our children creative time, but to also encourage them to try and experiment with traditional art techniques and mediums.

Lots of parents struggle with how to display all of the projects their children create at home, in the classroom, and during extra curricular activities. Displaying a child's creative efforts is important to developing their sense of self and cultivating their future creative pursuits.

Clutter and organization experts suggest providing a defined space, with limits, for displaying your child's work. If you'd like, involve them in selecting the location, but be sure to display their work prominently in your home where everyone can see it. It's also important to pick a setting with spacial limits. A defined amount of display space, encouraging them to make choices about what projects to keep and what to part with.

A simple google search proves there are tons of creative ways to display your children's artwork. Everything from large push pin or magnetic bulletin boards, to a small collection of large frames or the front or side of the refrigerator.

Having a gallery wall to display all of the children's artwork has worked well in our home. During the school year, everyone's work is displayed on the gallery wall. I'll write their name and class grade on the back and tape or pin it to the wall. When space runs out, we photograph each project, selecting just a few to save, and recycling the rest, making room for new projects.

Recently PreschoolDollDesigns, posted a simple way to display artwork, photographs, certificates, homework or other 2-D treasures your children come home with on her blog. It's a clothes line for art that you attach to the wall with nails or cup hooks. Simple, inexpensive and super chic!

[Image]Photo from PreschooDollDesign

You'll need clothes pins, ribbon, two nails or cup hooks, tape measure and wall space. The number of clothes pins and the length of ribbon will depend on the length of your wall display space. Once you've selected your wall space, determine the height of the clothes line and it's length. Place a nail or cup hook on each end. If your dedicating an entire wall space to the display of your children's art, consider stacking two or three rows of display space, spaced two feet apart.

To create the actual clothes line, thread the ribbon through the spring of the clothes pin. Repeat for the number of clothes pins you have space for. PreschoolDollDesigns recommends spacing them every 10-12 inches. The great thing about this set up is that they slid, easily accommodating small and over-sized projects. Once you have the desired number of clothes pins on your ribbon, tie a loop at one end. Hook over one of the cup hooks or nails. Stretch the ribbon to the second hook/nail and tie a second loop. The ribbon will stretch a bit over time with projects hanging on the line, so tie the ribbon straight and taught with little to not slack.

Here's a similar artwork display line in use in our home.

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PreschoolDollDesign has great suggestions of where to hang your art clothes line, along with four other ways to fabulously live free on her post, 5 Ways to Fabulously Live Free. I also loved looking through her Etsy Easter Finds ... 20 things for under $20. Lots of great finds the kids will love, and so will your budget.

Visit PreschoolDollDesign on Etsy and on Facebook.