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How Not To Do Things: Kiddie Art Gallery Edition
Amy Storch of Amalah.com | December 29th, 2008 - 2:32 PM
After being inspired by some other bloggers’ creative home displays of their children’s preshus weshus artwork, I recently decided that yes! I can totally do that! I shall build my own preschooler art museum and it will be ADORABLE and CLEVER and my house shall be transformed into the Pottery Barn catalog’s version of a house with kids instead of the real version, which is more like “deathtrap obstacle course of primary-colored clutter.”
(You know where this is going, right? I mean, even I’m yelling GIRLPLEASE at myself already.)
So I went out and bought some square cork tiles and self-adhesive safe-for-painted-walls double-sided sticky things. I dutifully applied the sticky things by the dozen to six of the cork tiles, carefully and painstakingly pressed them to the wall with a level and a measuring tape and then selected the best of my son’s artwork to proudly display with some super-cute thumbtacks.
Aaaaand this is what my art gallery looked like less than 24 hours later:
Rather than like, RETHINK my idea, I simply tried again, with more sticky things and without the level and measuring tape. 12 hours later I was down to two tiles standing.
So then I finally took my husband’s advice and tried tacking the tiles up with small nails. (And by “finally” I mean “took the advice that he never actually spoke out loud, but was apparently thinking the whole time, because HE KNEW the adhesive wouldn’t ever work, and why couldn’t I have read his mind? I mean, GOD.”) This probably would have worked, except that I guess construction-paper hand-turkeys and paper-plate pumpkins are just REALLY HEAVY, because after another 24 hours the cork tiles started drooping again and tore away from the nails, hitting the floor one last time, sending little bits of crumbling cork all over the place, which drove my dog crazy because she thought the cork was WAFFLES WAFFLES WAFFLES.
So, in summary, I currently have one (1) cork tile remaining on my wall, along fifty (50) or so adhesive stickies, twenty-four (24) tiny nails, several deep chips in the paint, zero (0) pieces of preshus weshus artwork on display and one (1) dog who is still pooping cork.
We use those at work for hanging photos, but I think whoever hung them might have used a combination of caulk and hot glue, and hung them on a metallic piece of wall…which totally came with your house, right?
Maybe just a regular corkboard will do, the kind the hangs from the wall with nails or screws? Or maybe pick up a few simple frames to hang on the walls, and rotate the art every so often.
I don’t know, my kid just turned 15. I think we stuck with the “artwork all over the fridge, secured by magnets,” route, and the beloved cork board.
Hilarious! (not that I mean to laugh at your frustration…I’m laughing WITH you, not AT you)
Oh man good luck with that. I hate when I do something clever and organized and it just won’t work out.
It is nice nice to make someone laugh quite so hard while at work!
At least you have the self control to stop yourself from getting a staple gun and pounding that preshus shit straight onto the wall…not that I ever did that, ahem,…
Oh God.
Thanks.
I bought some of those same cork tiles for my daughter’s room for Christmas, but haven’t put them up yet.
You’ve saved me from a fate worse than…
well, yours.
I will add this one to the list of “things that I shall never try b/c my husband will never let me hear the end of it” – thanks for the heads up!
(and, by the way, my hubby’s comment on this is “Who is going to fix that wall?!”)
I guess I shouldn’t disclose I throw Michael’s art projects in the trash. I am officially the worst mom ever. But he comes home with like 5 projects 5 days a week.
Fine, I suck.
HAHAHA! I had a similar experience with two extremely large maps I bought for my 9 year old’s room. It was laminated and would NOT stay on the wall. One of them is miraculously still up (although it needs to be re-patted every now and then) and the other one is now taped to the floor.
WAFFLES!
That is hilarious! Have you considered just buying a big framed corkboard? When my (3) kids were in preschool, I would put several pieces of artwork on the floor, take a picture of them, and then throw the artwork away. I only kept the really special ones. (Of course I kept alot more from my firstborn than the others!)
Try http://www.herculeshook.com/
Jodifur–I threw my daughter’s stuff in the trash too. I only have a handful of her preschool and elementary school artwork crap; the rest is in a landfill somewhere. So I guess we both suck! =)
I DID THIS TOO!!!! Kills me because it too so much energy to get to the store, put them up, etc. I finally just used so super glue crap. Hope the new owner someday likes cork tiles!
How about these? (BTW, you and Dooce are on my Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox so I can get to you quickly… OK, now I feel weird):
http://www.dooce.com/daily-style/2008/06/20/reusable-magnetic-display-system
BTW, I have yet to hang many works of art from my kids, ages, 8, 6, 5. My 6 y.o. daughter, however, has taken it upon herself to Scotch tape her art to the hallway wall. It’s better to let her have the sense of accomplishment than to let her know that I never got around to it…
Or, these are totally holding up three cheapo paintings in my kitchen:
http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Command/home/damage_free/picturehanging/
You have to get the super velcro thingies…then they stay up. I also got the falling tile syndrome, but luckily my dog did not think they were waffles…my 2 year old on the other hand…:-)
I can’t believe how incredibly similarly this went down at your house and mine. Bwahahaha. I feel better knowing I’m not the only total dork in the world.
I have seen several of my friends tie a nice ribbon or yarn across a wall from 2 small nails (kind of like a drooping clothes line, then they hang the work with clothes pins. I think it looks very cute.
Just the way it would have happened at my house, I’m sure …
ooh, ooh, I know the answer to this one. OK, I think I might have gotten it from the real simple magazine, but you buy some crazy old picture frames, take the backs out, paint them a cool color, and hang them on the wall empty in the back (like, you can see the wall.) Then you hang one of those office clip thingies (you see I’m doing a real good job of explaining this) on a nail pounded into the wall inside the frame, then you clip up whatever artwork you want. Gah. I hope that makes sense. I tried to find the article at realsimple’s website, but i cannot.
I am actually impressed- no level?! You were not messing around in the least. And don’t feel badly about the project. Kids’ art on the fridge is totally acceptable. Or in real frames. No reason to stress over it.
autumnalyssa, I think that was from Family Fun.
Yes! Found it!