Children's Art Display

Last Fall, I came up with a solution with a couple of decorating conundrums:

1. I have a large blank space of wall to the right of our library entrance and perpendicular to the front door.   Since it's such a wide space and extends through to the second story, I needed to find something fairly large in scale.  After months of searching, I found nothing that fit the bill (that didn't require me to get a second mortgage.)
2. There is a fair amount of artwork throughout the house, and I wanted to integrate the girls' artwork into the collection.   Reese gets a real kick out of seeing how proud we are of her efforts, and I think children's artwork adds a whimsical touch that can warm up otherwise cold, sterile spaces.   I originally had planned on doing a large magnet board in the kitchen but decided against it as it would have been just a glorified cork board.  I don't have an issue with using cork boards as they're ever so useful, but therein lies the problem for me.  I knew I'd end up tacking up receipts, bills, post-its, and the various daily life effluvia.   The result would be more clutter (contained, but still clutter), and the girls artwork wouldn't be highlighted as I would want.  They'd just look like more messy chaos.

My solution (click on image for larger display):

I love the result!  It's easy to change out artwork (or just stack on top of one another as more projects are brought home from school), and though there are so many different shapes, sizes, and colors, the grid of clipboards imposes a sense of order that really caters to my OCD tendencies.   It's many small pieces, but it reads as one large installation and fills up the wall nicely (and is meaningful and personal to boot).

Originally, I had bought inexpensive 9x12 canvas panels for the girls to paint for display, but I haven't gotten around to doing that.  I'm not sure that I'll still do it since there's no shortage of things for me to display.  I do keep heavyweight water color paper on hand when Reese wants to do watercolors, and few of those are hanging.

While I'm using the clipboards for the girls' art, I could see a non-parent using the display to hang up "real" artwork, random inspiration pictures and the like (in fact I do have a couple of monoprints and a small watercolor mixed in with the girls work.)

It took me a while to actually turn inspiration into reality because I was dreading the process of hanging the clipboards.   Because I'm so anal, it takes me forever to do projects like this because everything has to be perfectly lined up.  It was, to my relief, surprisingly easy.  I didn't take pictures while I did it, but I did do a mock up/simulation of some of the steps after everything was already done.

What you'll need:

• Clipboards.  I bought these Sparco clipboards.   They are much lighter in color in real life, but that's fine because you don't really see much of the clipboard.  I used the Letter size clipboards, but you may want to use Legal size clipboards as I've found that a lot of things that come home are larger than 8.5"x11".
• Nails
• Yard/meter stick
• Laser level
• Hammer
• Pencil
• Newspaper
• Painter's tape
• Step stool (if you're short like me)

Steps:

1. Using newspaper cut out the same size as your clipboards and painter's tape, tape up a mock up of the display.  You don't necessarily need to measure precisely or use a laser level at this point and can just eyeball it; you just want an idea of how many clipboards you'll need and how high and far apart to hang them.

2. Measure the distance from the midpoint of the mock-up of clipboard A1 to clipboard A4 (or whatever your last clipboard is.)  Divide that number by one less than the number of clipboards in that row.  For example, if the distance between the midpoint of A1 and the midpoint of A4 is 100, then your measurement is 100" divided by 3, or 33.33".    Record this measurement.  You can double-check your calculation by measuring between the midpoints of A1/A2, A2/A3, and so forth, as a comparison.
3. Measure the distance between the top of A1 to the top of B1.  Record this measurement. It's not so important to do a precise math calculation on the vertical alignment.
4. Make a pencil mark a 1/2" above the midpoint of the mock-up for clipboard A1.  ~1/2" compensates for the size of the hole on the clipboard clip.  This mark is your starting point for hammering in all the nails for your clipboards.

5. Remove the newspaper.   Using a laser level, make a vertical line through your starting point.  With a yardstick and pencil, measure and mark off your nail holes along the laser line. The distance between nail holes should be your measurement from Step 3.   These will be the nails for the first clipboard of each of your rows (A1, B1, C1, and so forth.).  Go ahead and hammer in your nails at this point and hang up this first column of clipboards to make sure you like the spacing.  If it looks good, remove the clipboards and proceed to the next step.

6. Now you're ready to mark off the remaining nail holes for your display.  Using your laser level, create a horizontal laser line through the starting point (the hole for A1, B1, C1).

7. With a yardstick and pencil, measure and mark off your nail holes along the laser line.   The distance between nail holes should be your measurement from Step 2.
8. Repeat step 7 for each row.
9. Hang up all your clipboards, stand back, and admire how everything lines up so nicely and is so orderly.  Feel a sense of peace and well-being wash over you.

There you have it - cheap and functional kids' art display!

* footnote: I take the clipboards off the wall to clip up new art to avoid accidentally ripping the nails out of the wall.