Their Story

“Daddy! Can you draw with me?” “Mumma! Can I do painting?” “I wanna play with glue!” “My pencil broke!”

They're frequent little questions. Their cute voices asking us for something, or inviting us into their world.

As adults, we don't always see that world. We're busy with our own priorities. Food needs to be prepared. The room needs to be tidied. There are toys scattered everywhere. Then there's work and all the other commitments that take up our time.

But our little ones see things differently. And they should.

Creativity is just one part of that world. They love to create, make things and get messy. I love watching my daughter sitting at her tiny little table with her pencils and felt pens, a large piece of paper in front of her slowly filling with colours and scribbles. Then comes the pride when she's finished and brings it over to show me.

We don't really see it at the time, but the creation she hands me will probably end up in a pile or a box. Or, if you're like me, on the wall of my office where I can see it every day.

An angled view along a lived-in office wall covered with a child’s colourful drawings, including a large rainbow in the foreground.

But I know that one day those pieces of paper will disappear somewhere. Some probably already have.

MyColorWall came from that thought.

But I didn't want to build somewhere that simply stored files. I looked at my daughter's colourful creations hanging on my office wall and realised there was something else attached to them.

My office wall is private too. It's covered in my daughter's creations, but only our family gets to see them. I wanted MyColorWall to be the same — a private place for the family, not somewhere children's creations are put on display for everyone else.

I remember the tiny body sitting at that little table. The small hands holding her pencils. The concentration while she worked. And then the moment that piece of paper went from her hands into mine.

That's what is attached to that piece of paper.

I built MyColorWall to preserve the things our children proudly hand to us. The little pieces of their world that they somehow translate into drawings, stories and creations and then give to us to keep.

I want MyColorWall to be able to hold onto those things for decades. So one day, both we and they can look back and perhaps remember a little more than what was drawn on the page.

Maybe we'll remember the little kid sitting quietly at their table, just being creative.