Recently I spent some time going through my “kids” section on Pinterest and decided to make it a goal to actually test some of these ideas out. We just finished our basement and the walls are completely bare. We actually renovated our entire house (more to come on that later) and unfortunately basement artwork wasn’t worked into the budget… bummer. Then I had a revelation. This room is for the kids, so why not deck the walls with kid art?

I’ll be the first to admit that my three year old is quite a handful, but when he is not busy being bad, he really cracks me up. Over the past two years I started compiling a list of the funny things he says. When I saw the canvas art with words taped on (pictured above), I thought it would be cool to use some of his silly quotes instead of just single words. My one year old was a little trickier because his vocabulary is limited so I had to be a little creative. After a trip to AC Moore I was set with supplies including various sized canvases, letter stickers and paint (yes, I had to buy this because our house is typically an arts-and-crafts-free-zone… I let them get their fill of glitter and glue elsewhere!) While they were napping I used the stickers to write out a few of my favorite things they say as such:

When the boys woke up I had them paint over the letters.  Meanwhile, I sat on my hands trying to not help when they started blending the paint to make puke green, a color that certainly does not match the paint scheme in my basement! After some minor suggestions to add a polka dot here or a swirl there, the canvases were left out to dry.

After about 10 minutes I peeled off the letters and there you have it!

Masterpieces complete:

About $25 for a wall full of art, but priceless for any parent, obviously.

(I have been banned from nailing holes into walls in our house. Pictures of the paintings on display coming as soon as I can get my husband to hang them up!)