Creative Way to Display Kids Art

This post is part of the 28 days of Naptime Craft Time series — a month of simple DIY projects for your home that you can complete during naptime. See all the posts in this series here.

Create a kids art display with a board, rebar, and some clothespins. This DIY idea is perfect to hang on the wall for children to show off their latest creations.

There comes a time in every mom’s life where you realize you can’t keep hoarding every single picture your little one colors or puts her handprint on. But what about the special ones?

My 3 year old is a coloring machine! Her daddy is a graphic designer and started drawing when he was really young. He’s working hard to pass that on to his girls and so far it seems like Clara is a major art lover like her daddy.

It was time we figure out a better system for organizing all her art and make a kids art display and organizer.

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For Clara’s 2nd Christmas we got her this small table and chairs and that is probably the most used piece of furniture in our home. She spends hours coloring and practicing her circles and letters at that table. It was time to jazz it up a bit, get some better organization for her colored pencils, and have a spot to display some of her favorite art.

Craft Time: 30 minutes
Waiting Time: 1 hour
Skill Level: Intermediate
Cost: $15

Materials to make kids art display:

2’x3′ 1/4″ birch plywood
18″x30″ remesh sheet
Matte black spray paint
Ceiling hooks
Clothespins
Command strips

Tools:

Sander
Bolt cutters or grinder
Metal file
Drill

1. Prep Plywood

First, you need to cut your plywood to size. Ours is 2′ by 3′ and I just ran it through the table saw to get it to size. If you know the measurements when you buy your material, you can have them cut it down for you at Home Depot.

Once it’s cut, sand down the whole piece to smooth out the edges and top and bottom. Little hands might be running all over this so you want to minimize the possibility of splinters.

2. Cut Remesh

This wire mesh from Home Depot is used to provide support in a concrete slab. It’s like small rebar and is super strong. You can buy a 42″ by 7′ piece for about $8 and that is more than enough for a large kid art display grid.

The squares are 6 inches so you can cut a 3×5 grid to attach to your 2’x3′ board. The best way to cut your remesh is with bolt cutters. These are usually used for cutting locks, but also super handy for cutting this remesh. If you have an angle grinder, this would actually be the best thing to use, but we didn’t have one on hand.

Cut your remesh down as close as you can get to the joint and then use a metal file to round the corners.

Clean your cut remesh with rubbing alcohol before painting.

3. Paint

Give your cut remesh a few coats of matte black spray paint.

Looking back, it’d be fun to have painted the back board similar to how I did with the giant pegboard.

4. Add Hooks

Now, it’s time to add hooks to the board for the remesh to hang from. Measure in from the corner 4 inches from the side and 3 inches from the top and drill a small hole right there with a bit that’s a little smaller than the hook screw.

Screw in the small 1/2″ hook from this pack.

Repeat this with every corner of the board. Since the remesh is meant to be in concrete, it isn’t perfectly straight so having a hook in each corner will help it not hang so wonky.

Don’t worry if the screws poke through the back. Just add a dot of hot glue to be safe, but the command strips when you hang the board are thick enough that the screws won’t reach the wall when hung.

5. Hang

Once the paint on your remesh has dried, it’s time to put it all together.

Add two large command strips to the top of the back and one medium size command strip in the center on the back of the bottom of the board. This is plenty to hold the board plus remesh up.

Once it’s attached to the wall you can hang the remesh from the hooks. It might take a little finagling to get the remesh on the top hooks and slip on the bottom hooks at the same time.

All you need now is some clothespins and your kiddos favorite artwork.

I love how this kids art display turned out! These two drawings are the some of Clara’s favorite that her daddy drew for her and then she helped color, Neigh the giraffe and Mark the zebra.