Displaying Kids' Artwork & A New Friend

hello monday. march is coming in a like a lion for sure and i'm praying for warmer temperatures to come our way soon. or else i'm running away.

design ideas come to me at the weirdest times. we were driving along in the car the other day and all of sudden an idea jumped in my head about how to display the boys’ artwork in the basement playroom. i’ve been searching and wracking my brain for a solution for months with two main conditions: minimal cost and no holes in the walls.

(empty wall!)

so i thought of hanging a bunch of clothespins with velcro command strips to easily change out artwork and accommodate different sizes and shapes. my plan was to get oversized clothespins and paint them or do something to jazz them up. but who am i kidding? i don’t have any time for these grand ideas (joking, not very grand, or difficult, at all) so i turned to etsy shop running blynd for a quick solution to my time problems.

then the trick was to figure out how to hang the clothespins so they lined up. i thought about putting them up randomly but decided that it would look messy and i also couldn't figure out how many to order that way. so i took out my painters tape and made a grid on the walls using a giant level (which also has measurements so i could measure at the same time).

at the intersections is where i planned each clothespin to hang (except on left side i decided it would be more interesting to do 2, 1, 2 so i centered one on the middle line instead of at the tape intersections).  then i marked each side of the intersections with a pencil so i could remove the tape and know where to line up the top of each clothespin.

looked a little strange with them all up but empty! but now we finally have a display wall for the boys. they love seeing their art up there and i think it makes them feel special.

we also added a new friend to the playroom. he came from dwell studio and i think he's right at home with the giraffe and elephant! (also hung with a command strip hook!)

and we braved ikea - on a weekend no less (actually we got there early and it wasn't bad at all!) - to add two more expedits to create a bank of storage. as soon as we put them in place the whole space looked so much bigger. the paper lanterns had been hanging from the ceiling (from the boys' bday party) so i took them down and scattered them along the top of the shelves - the colors seemed to work!

feels good to have all of this done!