Phi­los­o­phy
Give kids the most beau­ti­ful mate­ri­als we can afford and teach them to use the mate­ri­als prop­erly. I am not a big fan of wash­able any­thing because the col­ors tend to be washed out… I guess so they can be washed out… I would rather put my daugh­ter in art clothes and let her cre­ate. Using beau­ti­ful mate­ri­als is an inspi­ra­tion in itself.

MUST HAVES

Art Table.  I like this one from Land of Nod a lot.  It has an area for stor­age under­neath.  If I had one wish it would be that the table were a bit wider.  Occa­sion­ally some­one has put their foot in the stor­age area and knocked 8 bil­lion beads onto the floor. Solu­tion: Don’t put beads in this stor­age space. Paper, Trays, Works-In-Progress are all fine.  Hasn’t hap­pened enough to dis­suade me from the advan­tages of the extra stor­age. The most impor­tant thing about the art table is that it is an ART TABLE!!!! It is not your grandmother’s table that has been handed down through the gen­er­a­tions and that your mother was born on. It is a table to do art. You want your child to feel free to cre­ate, not to be wor­ried that they might get a lit­tle glit­ter glue on a fam­ily heirloom.

 

Table Cover. I wish I had thought of this when I first bought the table. Messy I like. Lumpy, not so much. Both the Land of Nod Table and the Pot­tery Barn Kids Table are made from com­pos­ite wood. If the fin­ished sur­face gets nicked then the com­pos­ite swells mak­ing a lump. Putting a strong poly­car­bon­ate cover on the table makes clean up a snap and keeps the sur­face smooth and even. The painter’s tape is also eas­ily removed from this sur­face. I had to cut it down to fit but a yard stick and a box cut­ter were all that I needed to make this work. I don’t like the indi­vid­ual place­mat sized mats because they never cover what needs to be cov­ered and you might as well have nothing.

 

Chair or Stool. Or a com­bi­na­tion of both. The chair can be a bit more com­fort­able since there is back sup­port. There are hun­dreds of choices out there. I put two chairs on one side and two stools on the other and I have a taller stool at the end for grown ups. In a tight space stools are great because they are easy to move and maneu­ver around.

 

Floor Cover. I love these col­or­ful Splat Mats from Land of Nod. There are a ton on Ama­zon and elsewhere.

 

 

 

Col­ored Mark­ers.  We have tried every­thing from Cray­ola to Sharpie to Martha Stew­art and these Bruynzeel Felt Tips are our hands down favorite. They also have a really cool magic pen that “removes” a pen mark you have put in by mis­take. You can also write a secret mes­sage and then reveal it by col­or­ing in over the top of it. We use this fea­ture a lot to make polka dots on a bugs back.

 

 

4. Col­ored Pens — I use Bruynzeel Felt Tips
5. Col­ored Pen­cils — Pris­ma­color
6. Paper (for Pen­cil, Ink, Water­color, Acrylic)
7. Scis­sors
8. Tape
9. Color Wheel
10. Port­fo­lio for Stor­age
13. Mag­netic dis­play boards with mag­nets
14. Clear Storage

Optional setups:

Water­color
1. Water­color Paints
2. Good Brushes
3. Silk Salt
4. Jars for water­color paint
5. Water­color Paper
6. Sponge
7. Jar for water to rinse the brush
8. Painter’s tape to tape the paper down

Poly­mer Clay:
1. Sculpey
2. Molds
3. Pasta Machine for blend­ing and soft­en­ing
4. Sculpey soft­ener or min­eral oil
5. Clay tools

Acrylic Paint

Water­color Crayons

Silk Salt

Glit­ter

Win­dow Clings

Silk cir­cles

Sten­cils

Collage/Mosaics

Sewing/Needlecraft

Here’s our philosophy:

One of the most impor­tant things to me is cre­at­ing a space so that the child can sit down and do some art with­out you hav­ing to sit there with them. My art area is setup in the kitchen so that I can cook or do laun­dry while she works.

Pit­falls:

Too many options. When I first setup this area I had every medium imag­in­able at my daughter’s dis­posal. I real­ized after a bit that this was just too over­whelm­ing. I have opted to always have