Boogers on the Wall

Several months ago I wrote about my artistic son who was drawing me out of house and home. I am happy to announce I have finally finished putting together a crafty way to keep his masterpieces. Well, most of them.

After my original blog post I had several great suggestions on what to do to keep his work. I decided to bind his best work into three books – his big book of artwork, his medium book of artwork and his little book of artwork.

I am so thrilled at how the books turned out I decided I’d share what I did – just in case you too are living with a mini Picaso.

I had hundreds of pages with sketches of Megaladon sharks, monsters, dragons, dinosaurs and more. If I would have hung his work up on my home’s bare walls, the pages would have made a wall paper several layers thick.

He has drawn hundreds if not thousands of pictures during his lifetime.

I gathered up his work from all corners of our house. There were stashes of his drawings in my bedroom, hall, closet, kitchen, van and any baby bag we have ever used. I had armfuls of pages that I laid out on our kitchen table.

I sorted out his best work and recycled the rest – yes I did let go of a few of them.

Then I placed them into three different piles based on page size. I trimmed each page’s edge to make them all uniform in size.

My good friend Jolene let me borrow her do-it-yourself binding machine. After getting each pile in an order I liked, I used the machine to punch the sides. My boys were so excited about he books they wanted to help. (It probably took twice as long with their “help” and I know I lost my temper a couple of times, but oh well.)

I bought thick comb-style binding and plastic covers from my local office store’s copy center. When all the pages were punched, I laced the binding through and voila! Instant art books.

I made six total – three for my 5-year-old and three for my 3-year-old.

It took me several weeks to get all of this done and of course my sons haven’t stopped drawing, so I’ll have to do this all again in a year or so. But I love flipping through the pages and seeing their talent grow.

I also love that my oldest has moved past his mom’s-always-angry-in-my-artwork phase. He has now started drawing me straight-faced. It’s not a smile, but it’s a vast improvement.

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