Peg Art is crafting with clothes pegs. That's right just ordinary wooden clothes pegs that you use to peg out the washing on the washing line. Peg Art can be done with most wooden pegs, both the dolly pegs and the wooden sprung clothes pegs. Of course Dolly pegs give them name to the fact that they can easily be crafted into dollies. And in the Victorian times, dolly peg dollies were often made to live in dolls houses.

In most cases; with the sprung clothes pegs, Peg Art crafts require you to dismantle the clothes peg and remove the spring from the middle, however I have seen peg art when the spring is also included to add extra interest or detail.

I first became interested in peg art when I was around eight years old. My Grandmother came to visit and she brought my Mother a Peg Art rocking chair that she had make at her Handy Craft group. Grandma was also a keen crafter.

The rocking chair was entirely crafted from sprigged clothes pegs, and stained a dark wood colour and varnished. I remember copying the rocking chair, to make my own. It was then when I realised that pegs were more than just implements to hang out the wet washing; pegs were a building material.

The great thing about using pegs as a crafting material is that they are more or less uniform. You will find odd pegs that are a little shorter than the others. However this is infrequent, and can add to the charm of the finished item, adding character. Another benefit is that wooden clothes pegs are really cheap, with a packet of 36 pegs costing around fifty pence.

Because the pegs are wooden they can be finished in a number of ways; you can paint, varnish or stain them. This makes pegs very user friendly as a building material.

Since the rocking chair I have created a few of my own Peg Art pieces including traditional dolly peg dolls of the Nutcracker Prince and Clara the ballerina designed to be used as Christmas tree decorations. I have also designed a peg art teapot stand, a Christmas star peg art decoration, a peg art love heart and Cupid's arrow and a peg art skeleton to name a few. I have published the instructions of how to make these art creations online on a few websites along with the peg art rocking chair.

Although I felt that Peg Art was a new idea to me at the tender age of eight, I realise now that crafters have been making things from pegs for years. This clear when you search for 'Peg Art' in Google, and it brings back 6,810,000 for this search including Dolly pegs Santa's and Nativity Scene's, to an elaborate looking geometric peg star wall decoration. Some Peg Art pages that Google find have instruction to make the peg art yourself whilst others sadly don't, however in most cases you could probably copy from the photo to create it yourself and I did all those years ago with the rocking chair.