by Brie Our 4 year old daughter loves to do art. All you have to do is look around our house at the crayons pieces littering the floor and tucked into the corners of our rooms. We have mounds and mounds of her art work. Last year, when she was in preschool, she was cranking out paintings faster then I knew what to do with them. Our hallway became a gallery of painting.

Eventually I took all the art work off the wall. I felt bad just throwing it out though. In a flash of what seemed like brilliance at the time I decided to turn the art into something practical. Something useful that I could pass onto family. Something that would get used and not just put in an art file.

Check out these placemats!

I laid the large sheets of paper on the dining room table and used a kids placement we had to trace out the rectangles. I took my time and made sure to position the placemat so as to capture the most artistic design. I was looking for bold colours! I wanted swirls and zigzags! I wanted art!

In the end I had twelve rectangular pieces. I took them to a large office supply store to have laminated at a cost of $2.50 each. It took about a week and when I picked them up I was pleasantly surprised by how great the bright paint looked laminated.

My family was just as happy. I passed on the placemats to aunts, uncles and grandparents. Since our family all live outside of Ottawa I thought this was a great way to have a reminder of the kids every morning over breakfast. My sister even decided they were too nice to eat off of and uses them for art work in her bathroom. That is what I call win-win.

Homemade placemats would be a great gift idea for family this holiday season. What other creative uses do you have for your kids art?

Brie is the mom of a 4 year old daughter “the girl” and 2 old son “the boy”. You can read her blog at Capital Mom.