Our two 5YOs are quite the budding artists. The sheer volume of work they produce on a daily basis is astounding. And it’s not limited to scribbling with crayons, no, not for these children of an art teacher. They use real art supplies, and create 3D as well as 2D projects. We desperately needed to expand our “on the fridge” display operation, but didn’t feel like filling the walls with holes.  I saw these picture ledges at Ikea and had an idea:

The idea here is that we can display 3D art on top of the slim shelves, while also hanging 2D pieces from the wires/clips. I don’t know if I’d call this an Ikea “hack” insofar as we are still using it for its intended purpose. However, adding the wires to the bottom of the shelves doubled the functionality of the display shelf. (There we go with stacking functions again!)

Interested? For each shelf, you’ll need:

1 Ikea “Ribba” picture ledge, 45″ ($14.99)
1 Ikea “Dignitet” wire curtain rod ($12.99)
1 set Ikea “Deka” curtain wire clips ($6.99)

Mount the curtain rod brackets to the bottom of the shelf. Adam had to make a special trip to the hardware store to get the right size screws. Attach the wire. Attach the clips. Done! Total cost per shelf: $35. You could do this cheaper if you bought the lumber, screwed it together, and painted it, but… we decided to go with the easy route.