Making an Art Center at Home

Even though this site is dedicated to beautiful picture books we love and art projects (led by me) that go along. I do believe that my girls also thrive from creating for the sake of creating. Here is our home art center that encourages exploration and fun with our favorite go-to supplies. Note that these are different from my Art Supplies Page, which lists the main supplies for the story time art projects (including liquid tempera & watercolor paints in glass jars and other items I don’t want them to have access to without my supervision). These are the supplies that I leave out for the girls to use anytime the creative mood strikes them, which is quite often these days… sometimes even before morning cartoons!

Being a military family that is constantly on the go, setting up an art space in each new home can be a challenge. I’ve learned to work with what we have and to try and keep it simple. In this home, we have this little corner area off the side of the playroom that I knew was the perfect spot for their art center. This home also has taller ceilings, so I knew I needed to work up. Hence the cute little shelf I got from Target that just seemed to fit perfectly in the space.

Items on the shelf:

Underneath the shelf is a little place for me to display a recent work of art and these handy hanging file organizers for coloring books, doodle pads, sticker books, etc. It’s so nice keeping them off the work space and displayed in a more organized way to see what we actually have!

On the table, we have this cute art caddy tote that organizes some of their favorite supplies. Here is what we keep in it:

  • Kwik stix
  • Crayola twistables (scented because it’s fun!)
  • Crayola washable markers: Silly Scents (again, because what kid doesn’t want to color with a marker that smells like cotton candy?) I noticed that my 3 year old has a tough time with the lids of these markers, so I tend to prefer the good ole Mr. Sketch scented markers for that reason.
  • Dot markers: we LOVE these! We have the shimmer and metallic versions too. My three year old especially has so much fun lining them up and making fun designs with just dots. I love playing with them too… and saving the dotted papers for future art projects later!

That’s our art corner for this house… I’d love to see yours and how art making at home with little ones works for you! Tag us on instagram @picturebooksandpeonies or shoot me a message from my contact page. ?

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