Re-purposing Kids' Art

I don't like to throw anything away that my kids make.  As a crazy sentimental mommy, I would keep forever and ever a little scratching done on a Post-it note, if it was scratched by the hands that belong to these faces:

The faces that belong to those hands are pretty cute, so, needless to say, I have stacks of paintings and colorings and markerings and stickerings.  I know I can't keep it ALL,  but, I can't bring myself to just pitch their creative endeavors.  So, a way to get rid of some of the stacks of stuff, without just moving it to the trash...

I have had these on the wall for a long, long time and it was long past their time to go.  We started by cutting out little rectangles from the paintings with the goal of making notecards.

Rectangular cuttings all ready to go.  I did bring myself to throw away the scraps, though it was a challenge.  Told you I was crazy sentimental...I wanted to keep the SCRAPS of their paintings.

We then glued the painting pieces to blank notecards purchased at the Dollar Store...

Once we did the gluing, I did put the notecards under a bin of magazines to help flatten them out. 

We also cut some longer strips from the original paintings and then folded them in half to make another type of notecard.

So, there is painting on both sides and blank on the inside.

Sending off their art work in the mail truck sure seems better, to me, than sending it off in the garbage truck.

For Reading.

Legos and Crayons

Recently, we combined two of our favorite things to make make one so-so art project.  Here is it, in all of it's marginal glory.

We started by arranging Legos on a Lego board. 

Next, we laid paper on top and rubbed a crayon over the paper...making kind of a Lego-crayon etching.

Mine, but only mine, turned out decently.  The kids had a hard time, I think because the board was not entirely covered with Legos.  The non-flat surface seemed to be problematic for the kids.

We tried again, this time removing the Legos from the Lego boards so that the kids were working with a totally flat surface.  This worked much better for them, though didn't produce the cool designs I had pictured.

 

Abby did work on her Lego coloring happily, but Eli jumped ship pretty quickly.  "This isnt' so exciting, Mom," he said.  I know, Buddy, I know.

This is one we might have to try again...when the kids are older or when their mom can think of a way to make it work better...which ever comes first.