Theoretically, anything you can do with paper or fabric, you can do with two-dimensional art. You can laminate it, decoupage it, copy it, iron it on, build origami out of it or affix it to just about anything. Art can revisit your life in the form of gift wrap, calendars, postcards, book covers, puzzles, shelf paper, playing cards, mobiles and bumper stickers. Your headquarters for making any of the projects shown here is your local copy shop, which can color-copy, laminate and make heat transfers from your child's artwork.
CLOCKS
To make your own timepiece, pop the plastic cover off
an inexpensive clock and remove the clockface. Carefully cut your artwork to the same size as the clockface and add numbers around the edge if you like. Slide your piece of artwork in place and reattach the plastic cover. Presto--you've got an elegant clock in no time.
BUTTONS AND MAGNETS
The fun part of this project is sitting down with your child and choosing details from one of her drawings. You can either use your own button maker like Badge-A-Minit Starter Kit ($30; 800-223-4103), or if you're lucky, visit a local button maker like mine (who calls himself The Button Person), who will make a small run for you. We got them for sixty cents apiece (at larger shops, buttons run about $3 each). To turn drawings into magnets, affix a section of pressure-sensitive magnetic strip, available at most art stores.
RUBBER STAMPS
Any art composed of simple, strong lines can be made into a rubber stamp. Shrink it to the size you want on a copy machine so you know how it will look when it's stamp-size. If you like, you can also type or handwrite the name of the artist onto the drawing before handing it over to the stamp shop. (If you don't have a stamp shop nearby, try your local stationery store or copy shop.) The stamps we made cost about $13 each. Your child can use her finished stamp to decorate wrapping paper and gift tags, or for personalizing a plain pad of stationery.
ENVELOPES AND STATIONERY
To make an envelope pattern, carefully open up a store-bought envelope and
lay it flat in front of you. Place it on top of any piece of artwork (as long as there's a blank space for writing an address), cut around the edges, and fold and glue the artwork into a homemade envelope. Or, you can shrink a piece of artwork on a color copier, cut it out, glue it onto your blank envelope pattern, and color-copy it again. Use the same technique for making the writing paper. Black and white copies are cheap (six cents a copy) and yield great results. Use the more expensive color copies for fancy invitations and announcements (they run $2 to $3 per copy, but you can get lots of small cards on one big piece of paper.)
HANDWORK AND QUILTS
A friend of mine made a cross-stitch pillow from her daughter's first self-portrait
(with her daughter's old blanky as the stuffing). I made a quilt with a few of my son's drawings. All of the artwork was much bigger than it is in the finished quilt. At my local copy shop, I had it color-copied and shrunk down in one step, then heat-transferred onto cotton fabric (a process available at most copy shops). Later, I sewed the fabric together and quilted it. The total copy bill for printing this quilt was about $35. For fabric and batting, about another $25. Heat-transferring just one image--say, onto a T-shirt--will cost you about $15. One caveat: washing will eventually fade the color of heat transfers (the image can then be improved slightly by ironing). But even so, the enjoyment a proud mom or dad gets while it lasts is well worth it.
LIGHT SWITCH COVERS
You can transform any art into a big sticker with Color-aid DuoTac, which is essentially an 18- by 24-inch sheet of double-stick tape and costs about $3. Cut out a rectangle to make a light switch plate cover. If you laminate the artwork first at a copy shop or if you use laminating paper, you don't need the DuoTac. You can just punch two holes in the lamination and screw the cover in place.
JEWELRY
You can use jewelry hardware to transform artwork into earrings, barrettes, necklaces,
pins and keychains. We started with artwork that was three feet tall; we shrank it down in several steps (fifty percent, then fifty percent of that, and so on) on a color copier, then reinforced them with a sheet of laminating paper. Good quality earring hooks cost us $1.20 a pair; a barrette clip and a key chain cost thirty cents each. For another variation, you can find a clear plastic frame key chain at a photo store for about $2 and slip a piece of art into it. A photograph of the artist on the flip side makes it a nice gift.
PLACE MATS, BOOKMARKS AND ORNAMENTS
Putting artwork under plastic brings out the colors and adds a smart, professional look. For place mats, take a set of 11- by 17-inch artwork down to the copy shop and ask a clerk to run it through the laminator (about $3 each at most copy shops) or, for a less finished surface, use clear Con-tact paper at home. To make a bookmark or ornament, choose a piece of art and apply the no-heat 9- by 12-inch Cleer-Adheer sheets you can buy at a stationery store (we bought a box of fifty for $21). Cut the sheet into bookmarks, punch holes and add tassels.
