It seems like every day your child comes home with a new piece of art, another drawing or painting (or a scribble) that they’ve designed just for you… again.
But with space quickly running out on your fridge, walls, and countertops, what do you do with the never ending piles of kid art that come home day after day?
Well, no need to despair (and no need to resort to the trash can!)… turn your kids art into a neat, tidy, and organized Art Book! Here’s how:
Step 1: Make a Happy Compromise with Your Child. Talk with your child and make the decision together that all art that comes home will go into their very own Art Book. Their Art Book will be a book that will save all of their masterpieces into one organized location. They can even keep this book in their room and look at all of their creations any time that they want. Make a deal that this is how all art will be kept, and all artwork originals will be recycled. That way everyone wins- they can keep their art, and you can keep your sanity.
Step 2: Scan Drawings & Paintings. Take your child’s paper artwork and scan their masterpieces to your computer.
Step 3: Take Digital Photos. If the paper artwork is too large to fit entirely in the scanner, take a digital pic! Or if your child has created a craft that won’t easily go into the scanner, taking a digital photo will also create a solution. Save the digital photos to your computer in a special “Artwork” folder.
Step 4: Resize Pages. Open Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and resize all scanned paper artwork to 8.5 x 11 inches or 12 x 12 inches (depending on the size of the Art Book that you want to create. Either dimensions are fine, just make sure that you stay consistent and choose one or the other so that all pages are the same size). See Digital Scrapbooks and More’s Getting Started Series Digital Scrapbooking Training to learn how to resize pages within Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.
Step 5: Digitally Scrap Pages. You may want to actually digitally scrap each page, especially the pages that were once digital photos of art or crafts. For example, if you did not want to format a single photo of your child’s artwork to 8.5 x 11 inches or 12 x 12 inches, you could add one (or several photos) of the art to a New Document and add details- like text! The text that you add could include the name of the art project, the teacher or class it was made in, the purpose behind the artwork or craft, and the date it was made. Any explanations or stories associated with the art is always a nice addition to any page; you may want to even include these text details on your scanned artwork pages too!
See Digital Scrapbooks and More’s Getting Started Series Digital Scrapbooking Training to learn how to use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, digitally scrap pages, and add text to scanned documents!
Step 6: Create a Art Book & Print. You can create beautiful (and professional-looking!) art books wrapped in leather or linen by going through an Online Printing Company.
See Digital Scrapbooks and More’s Getting Started Series (specifically, Lesson 6) in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to learn more about saving, printing, and using an online printing company.
Upload your resized and scrapped pages to your online printing company account, and follow the instructions to buy and print your child’s very own Art Book!
It’s that easy! Now your child has his or her very own Art Book that holds all of their special drawings, paintings, and crafts that are condensed down to a small, organized book that they can keep in their room!
It’s a happy situation for everyone: their artwork is preserved and your walls and countertops are visible again… yay!
EXTRA TIP: Convert your child’s Art Book into a PDF file that you can email to Grandma and Grandpa! Take the all-new Digital Scrapbooks and More PDF training to learn how!
Happy Scrapping!
-Jennifer
