My children have loved to create art for a long time, but up until recently that creation had not “lived” any where and would often leap off of the paper and end up on walls and tabletops with little bits of crayon hiding in ever nook and cranny. I was frustrated when we couldn’t find the crayons. I was overwhelmed with how many of my children’s masterpieces would be presented to my husband or I and we had nowhere to put them. So it was time for a change. We needed a dedicated and defined space for art!

My first step was to find a location. We have an end table that lacks purpose in the corner of our living room. It had been moved from being a true end table to a lonely corner after we bought a bigger couch that left no room. It was just sitting there as a wall filler, waiting for my husband or I to get our act together and move it to the attic. I am glad my laziness prevailed this time, because it is the perfect size for our new art station! The small drawer now houses the drawing and tracing paper.

Our old end table became our new art station!

On the shelf below I put art trays (to contain the art, especially when we do crafts) and a pencil caddy to house our colored pencils. I decided with the advice of a Montessori teacher that colored pencils would replace crayons in our home. They encourage proper pencil grip and aren’t nearly as messy as crayons.

Lastly, I bought an accordion file holder to house finished art pieces. This gives the kids a place to house their work. Every two weeks the kids and I will go through the file and decide if we should keep or recycle. The decision making will be up to them. Once a year or there about we will take all of the “keeps” and scan them into the computer to create a digital copy. This will free up the file holder to capture and store next year’s creativity. If the kids are interested I can see us turning the digital art into a book using Blurb or similar.

My son filing away his work with a helping hand from big Sis.

It was an easy one day project, but the kids went bananas over it. I am excited to now have a defined space that is easy for the kids to maintain and that they are still excited about using.

The focus and intensity is not staged! They really are that into it!