I’m a mom of 4 kids… do you know what that means??
Lots and Lots and Lots of kids’ artwork and school papers!
I love seeing all of their cute drawings and journal entries. I especially love seeing how much they grow and change within a school year. What I don’t love… piles. I have piles of school papers everywhere! A few years ago I considered starting a little business… in my head I called it “Pint Sized Picasso” I never pursued it as a business, but I did start making books for my family. Rather than having a million boxes of papers, I make artwork photobooks!
At first it was hard to part with the piles of papers, but honestly, we adore these books! The kids love looking through their books and showing their Grandparents when they come over.
Here’s my method:
1. Create a massive pile for the month. As homework and papers come home they all just go into one massive mess of a pile. (My hubs loves this part!)
2. At the end of each month (approximately) I sort through the pile and toss the generic work sheets. I hide them in the garage trash can because my middle son takes personal affront to my throwing away any of his papers.
3. At the end of school year I have a massive sort party! I make a pile for each kid and then determine which items to scan and which to take pictures of (the big, bulky ones)
4. Scan and Photograph (pretty self-explanatory) I don’t have a fancy scanner, but it does the trick. It’s pretty time consuming, but so worth it in the end.
5. I use Blurb to make my books. They make the best books and are so reasonably priced! Remember when my handsome hubs guest posted about Blurb in this post? (There’s a link on our sidebar for 20% off of a Blurb book!)
Ok, so now take a look at how adorable these are…
I add an “About the Artist” page with the school pic from the year and a little about what was “cool” that year.
Goodness, I could look at these over and over. They make me smile so much!
Scanning the pics preserves all the details! I love that these pictures won’t be getting all crumbled and old. I have them forever!
I even put a few non-school papers in… the note on the left was one my daughter wrote when she was grounded one afternoon.
The note is too funny not to share…
One other thing I add is journal entries. I scanned lots of pages from her daily journal once it was sent home and I love reading all the cute entries. Since it’s almost Halloween, I’ll share a fall entry…
If you want to preview my whole book, you can check it out here.
So, what do you think?
Can you part from the papers and create a photo book?
Can you part from the papers and create a photo book?
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Did you hear about our Design it Forward challenge? We still need donations and helpers! Check out our post HERE and be a part of this awesome project!
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I LOVE this idea!!!! i HATE the piles of artwork, but I just cannot part with it so I have a huge plastic bin full of Ewan’s and I’ve just started 1 for Liam!!! I was trying to think of how I would ever part with ANy of it and I think i just may have to copy this idea! Brilliant!!!!
What a GREAT idea! Thank you so much for sharing!
What a GREAT idea! I have ti do the same and hide the papers in the trash! I don’t know if I could part with the originals though….
This is the greatest idea ever!
I LOVE this idea! What a great keepsake for them. Much easier to preserve than stacks of paper too!
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this!
Great idea! I do something similar with making calendars out of my kids artwork. After buying the easels for kids I came up with this idea with all the extra artwork I had from them!
Great idea, my daughter started her first year of preschool this year and I have been wondering how to store all her masterpieces! Love this!