Organising our Monkeys - Kids artwork display boards

Organising the Monkeys art work keeping all those the special bits and pieces of paper from awards to special pictures and creations as they are fondly called in the monkey house that they've brought home can be a challenge at times and with 4 children we just do not have a big enough fridge to put every item on it. 

Since our son started started bringing artwork and other things home back in 2008 I've gone through multiple ideas, the fridge obviously but it ended up covered so many different pieces that things would fall off every time we opened up the fridge door. I tried rotating what he was bringing home and what Diva and Princess monkeys were doing at home regularly but well let's say I'm slack I love having kids artwork up for a long time and our fridge just wasn't big enough. ;) kind of like this

but on speed I felt like soon we'd be drowning in them like in Bruce Almighty and whilst I'm not the most domesticated house person it was getting too much even for me.

So early last year I came up with an idea an I put up some string and cute pegs in our entry area like this

but even it was getting a bit much it still wasn't quite right for s then I started coming across ideas for the art boards but wasn't prepared to pay for them when I could do them myself. 

 So I've made up some art display brag boards while it took a little longer than I'd have liked to complete (sick kids, car troubles and bad weather were the main contributors) but that's all part of the fun of it right? 

I started by painting two coats of the lighter colour then using blue painter tape to add in some stripes I went for fun over perfection ;) and painted over with the darker colour, once it dried though I wasn't entirely happy with how that turned out so I added in some irridescent medium at a ratio of approx 1:3 with 1 part of Renoir Irridescent Medium to 3 parts gloss varnish.

They are a little shiny now after the gloss and irridescent medium coat so getting a good picture is a little bit of a challenge so hopefully you can  see them well enough. The pegs are ones I bought at Christmas time  two years ago for $2 they are supposed to be for Christmas cards but I just knew they could be something cute art and craft wise they have bright coloured sparkly stars on them. 

Although I took the photos at night you can also tell that Diva Monkey's room is in our lovely new blue colour and that Princess and Baby Monkey's room is yet to be painted (it's a bit harder to do sibling sleep over's at their ages.) Whilst Baby Monkey is obviously not doing art work yet I just wanted to make sure she wasn't left out when she started. Most importantly the girls love them and as you can see Diva Monkey quickly added some art work to hers.

In case you're wondering Cheeky Monkey was given a brag board for his birthday last year by his Aunt so he hasn't been left out ;) and he frequently makes up new pictures for it.



I'm linking up with Today's Creative Blog for Get Your Craft on Tuesday