Art-Art Clipboard

April 1, 2010 8:43 am Gillian Crafts, Home Decor, Kid's Crafts, Projects

By Kid’s Craft Contributor, Gillian from the blog “Dried Figs and Wooden Spools”.

When you are a mom of a kid, particularly a preschool or elementary school aged kid, you deal with an ENORMOUS amount of “Look what I did at school today!” papers. Art, science, history, stories, more art, it’s a never ending deluge. And we love it. We do. But sometimes, it’s hard to find a space to display all that proof of your child’s wonderfulness. Especially in these days when not all refrigerators are magnetic (oops!) it’s always nice to have another place to hang their masterpieces.

While we have a pegboard in the playroom and a magnet board in the kitchen (and framed kid art too) I wanted a place in my office, (which doubles as our mudroom) for some of my personal favorites to hang. And to make it extra special, I put some of their best work right there on the display board so in the event (unlikely) that the artwork stops coming, I’ll still have something fun to look at when I’m supposed to be hard at work.

Here’s what you need to make your own Art-Art Clipboard:

MDF Strips to fit your space, mine were 4 inches tall by 24 inches long
Paint
Mini Clothespins (regular will do as well)
Scanner and printer
2-3 pieces of your child’s art per board

Start by painting the boards with 2 coats of paint. I started with white but found that it was too plain with the artwork so switched to the accent colors of my room. While the boards are drying, scan all the artwork into your computer. Select each image and copy and paste them into a Microsoft Word Document, resizing them to be just a but shorter than your boards are wide.

Print out a sheet with all your artwork and trim around the edges of each piece. Yo can also print out words such as your child’s name to add to the boards.

Apply a thin coat of Mod Podge to the back of each piece of artwork and smooth it onto the dry surface of the painted board. Continue to smooth the paper until dry and flat. Coat the entire surface with a coat or two of Mod Podge to seal and attach clothespins at 8 inch intervals (this way you can put one sheet of paper across two clips if you want).