What to do with all this KID ART? (Spring Wreath)

Like many parents of young children, we find ourselves drowning in piles of artwork from our two kiddos. Some they did at home with us because we needed an indoor activity (and right now after quarantine we had a LOT of those days), and some they did at daycare over the years.

I've talked to friends about it and we all seem to fall into various places on the spectrum of throwing it all away to hoarding. I want to keep some mementos, for sure, but oh my gosh....it's just...so much. And, I mean, I love my kids, but let's be honest - most of it looks basically exactly the same. It's splotches of paint or streaks of marker or crayons on various pieces of paper. Cool.

So, I"m offering a few ideas here somewhere along that trash-can-to-cedar-chest range.

This is the SPRING WREATH idea...

Spring Wreath:

This is a great option for the millions of pages of painted paper that all look basically the same, but offer nice variations of color as a new palette for seasonal decorations. I did spring because it happens to be spring, but this could certainly be adapted for any season. The artwork goes to use into something that you will keep, but it doesn't end up taking up so much space.

We have ours hanging on our door for spring! Full disclosure - it is not technically spring yet, but we were ready for winter to be over, so we hung it up to "tell everybody that we love spring" (in the words of my 4-year old).

Perhaps we'll make something for summer too...TBD...

--> Materials needed:

scissors

cardboard

hot glue gun

plain construction paper (optional - feel free to just keep using your kids' art for all the extra bits)

STEP ONE:

Cut out a circle backing for the wreath in cardboard.

STEP TWO:

Cut out flower petals out of various artwork.

(our cat liked this step because it gave her a place to sit in all of the leftover scraps...)

STEP THREE:

Cut out some center pieces and leaves for the flowers - I used plain construction paper for contrast, but you could certainly use more artwork, or the less-colored edges of the paper. I kept abstract here and just did squares for centers and general leaf-shaped green paper for leaves. I'm not going full realism.

STEP FOUR:

Start gluing one flower at a time onto the cardboard!

STEP FIVE:

Layer more and more flowers, overlapping as you like. Sprinkle in some of the "leaves" as you will.

DONE. I ended up using about 5 different paintings from school for this wreath. So they went to use, we have a pretty wreath on our door, and I didn't have to decide what to do with those 5 pieces of artwork. I feel like that was a mom win.