Sensibly Saving Sentiment: Repurpose Children's Drawings

Even though my twin toddlers' drawings are more on the abstract side, they're colorful and joyous, and I cannot bring myself to throw them out.

Instead, I repurpose them in a variety of projects. Here are just a few repurposing ideas:


Filling in the Difference When Framing

I used to work in custom framing, so I appreciate a good mat board, but I don't mind a simple substitute when it concerns smaller, tabletop photo frames.

Photo of my dad and me sometime in the 90s

Since my photo was not quite the right size for this frame, I simply cut the paper of my child's drawing to fit the frame and centered the photo to the paper with photo corners.*

*I recommend using acid-free photo corners or acid-free tape. Anything that's not acid-free will eat away at the photo over time. To go that extra step, you could even have your child draw on paper that you know is acid-free.

Fold Them Up into Decorations

I love using origami to decorate the house for my kids' birthday or holidays. Last year, we had a butterfly birthday theme, but what's great is that I can now use those butterflies as decorations every spring (special thank you to my mother-in-law and sister-in-law for making all of these beautiful butterflies and to my mother for sparking my love of origami)!

Instructions for this butterfly can be found here.

I even made an origami kusudama flower to add to the springtime fun.

What is neat about these is you can make a single flower (one piece of paper is used per petal) or a flower ball out of several flowers.

Photo and instruction from this blog.

I'm slowly working my way up to making a flower ball of my own. This example used two 6-petal flowers and ten 5-petal flowers.

(6x2) + (5x10) = 62 pieces of paper

I have the paper. I just need the time.


When in Doubt, Mod Podge

My children's first drawings were used for this DIY lap desk.

I recently used Mod Podge to cover these old baking pans for a future DIY project.

 

For this project, I ripped up the paper into various shapes and sizes. Then I glued them to the surface with a cut piece of sponge and Mod Podge (be sure to overlap them). After it dries, apply one final coat of Mod Podge as a finish.


Glass ornaments are another ideal, smooth surface for this application.

If you don't have any to spare, consider seeking some inexpensive ones out at a thrift store or waiting until after Christmas to get highly discounted ornaments at a place like Michael's or Target (that's what I did).


Decorate a Mason jar.

I use a small jar to hold my children's spoons. I didn't want to cover the whole jar because I love having the colors of the spoons show through, so I just decorated it with a small heart.

First, draw the heart on with an erasable marker. Then draw the heart again on the inside of the jar, using the heart you just drew as a template (it's too hard to draw the heart on the inside straight away). Erase the marker on the outside.

Tear one edge of the paper to match the outside edges of the heart. Use smaller pieces of paper to fill in any gaps left after focusing on the edge.

Wipe away excess Mod Podge from around the shape with a damp cloth before it dries on the glass. And don't forget to reapply one final coat of the Mod Podge after the pieces of paper are all applied and dry (of course, wipe away the excess Mod Podge again if necessary).

Add a little glitter glue or puffy paint as a finishing touch.