Our Little Man Cave Art Studio

If you’re following us on Facebook or Instagram, you’ve probably read about the progress on our Little Man Cave for my three year old son. It all started about a month ago when my parents came over with a slide. My son loves slides and he was thrilled to have one of his very own in the basement. He loves playing in the basement but we didn’t really have a particular style – unless toys scattered over the floor counts. That’s when I decided to do some renovations to the basement and create his own Little Man Cave. I wanted to build him an art studio for kids, expand the active area to include more than the slide, organize a racing area for all his Hot Wheels and renovate our little home theatre area. The first project I tackled was the art studio for kids.

Art Studio For Kids:

He loves coloring so I wanted a few different areas for him to be able to draw and color. I did a lot of searching on Pinterest and started a board with ideas for the Little Man Cave. Our fridge displays several of his little masterpieces but I wanted a fun way to display his art inside his own little art studio. I love this clothespin frame idea by Living Well Spending Less so I created my own version with some frames from Michaels, some clothespins and black spray paint. I used double-sided removable poster tape to secure the clips to the frames and then the frames to the wall. He was so excited to see his artwork up on the wall!

We then needed some places for him to create his artwork. I’m not a DIY crafty person but I had a plan of making a chalkboard to hang on the wall. I went to Winners looking for the perfect frame for this project and instead I found the perfect chalkboard already inside a beautiful frame. It was my lucky day! It’s a pretty heavy frame so I had my dad screw the frame directly onto the wall. It’s at the perfect height for my son to draw on.

Next I wanted a frame that we could put on the other wall that he could color in. While at Winners, I found a great bulletin board frame so I asked me dad to replace the bulletin board with a solid board so it had a hard back to clip paper too. I used heavy-duty double sided tape to secure two clips to the board so that we can clip paper right into the frame for him to color on.

Now that we had places to color, we needed a container to hold the art supplies. Inspired by this kids art bucket idea on Shanty 2 Chic, I placed a couple of hooks on the wall with two metal pails (metal pails from Michaels, hooks from Home Depot) to hold chalk, markers and crayons.

I knew that we also needed a place to sit for arts & crafts so I picked up this fun Imaginarium LEGO Activity Table. You can turn the table top over for a LEGO base or a plain wooden base for art. My son loves it and has been downstairs playing LEGO on the table every day since we purchased it. It also comes with two ottomans that double as storage containers for the LEGO pieces.

The art studio area is now complete! Next I’ll be working on the racing area for his Hot Wheels but we have to tackle some flooring renovations first. The Hot Wheels can’t race on the carpet so we’ll be replacing the carpet in the race area with some beautiful new laminate. I look forward to sharing more “after” photos with you!

*Disclosure: I am part of the Amazon affiliate program. All opinions expressed here are my own.