Organizing Tip: Archiving your Children's Artwork

If you have young children, chances are you are flooded with their artwork.  There's only so much you can display, but you feel too guiltly to throw it all away.

I have a client who was struggling with the same problem.  She is extremely sentimental and kept almost every piece of her children's artwork.  Imagine all the papers she has been collecting with 3 kids.  She was quickly running out of space and wanted a more efficient way of archiving all her kid's artwork, so I suggested scanning the art and making a photo book.

First, we took inventory of all the art.  As much as we love our kids, not every piece of art they create is a masterpiece, so we worked closely with her daughter to select the best art that had the most sentimental  meaning.  Next, we sent them into ScanCafe to have them scanned into jpegs.  If you have a scanner, you can do this yourself, but given the quantity and the large size of some of the artwork, it was easier to have a professional do it.  Once we received the DVD, we uploaded them to Mixbook and made a 12x12 photo book.  There are many other photo book sites, but I prefer Mixbook because you can add, resize, move and delete pictures and text boxes very easily.

I chose a simple white background for the photo book because I didn't want anything to compete with the artwork, but there are many background and embellishments you can add to jazz it up.  Take a look at the finished photo book.  It's arranged chronologically, and it's interesting to see how her daughter has grown and matured over time.   At the end of the project, we were able to condense two large boxes of artwork into one slim photo book.