Finally! I’ve figured out a way to organize my kiddo’s art! Are you like me and have piles upon piles of kid art because you just can’t part with it or you want to keep it, but you just don’t know what to do with it? Do these pictures resemble your house? And I only have ONE kid, but with him finishing official Kindergarten, I knew I had to find a solution. And this solution is sooooo easy – I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out sooner.
I had tried a few apps {ArtKive, Art My Kid Made, Canvsly, etc}, but didn’t find any of them quite as easy as scanning the pictures using my printer directly into my computer. But holy moly I didn’t want to have to scan each one seperately, surely there was a way to scan a bunch at a time through the feeder. And sure enough a quick google search, 5 minute tutorial and I found a way using my Epson printer. You can find all kinds of video tutorials here, and you can probably google your printer. Or you can buy my printer – I use the Epson WorkForce 635 {sold on Amazon, but discontinued – Epson will have something similar}. Basically, you create a folder on your computer then scan the art pages in and they save as individual files – love it! Once you have .jpg or .png files, you can upload to Mixbook or Shutterfly to create photo books. Genius. We do this already with our photos to create a annual photo books on Mixbook so why not with the art.
I have 7 years of art. So I decided to start with Kindergarten, our most recent school year, and work my way backwards. So I went back through all the art and organized them in 3 piles: scan, keep originals, and trash. For the scan pile, these were the ones that were easily 8×10 or ones I could scan on the flatbed of the printer. The keep pile was for art I wanted to add to our wall of art in the playroom or that I could add to the Mixbook later {I made blank pages in the book to have some original art}. The the trash pile was for duplicates and art that just wasn’t all that interesting or some school work {in Kindergarten, you get a lot of school work pages}.
For Mixbook, you just pick a theme {and they have lots to choose from, plus you can swap themes per page}, upload all the photos then you can randomly insert – that’s what I did and then I moved things around. You can also add text and stickers. I love Mixbook! I also created blank pages so I can add some original art to the book when I receive it. If you’d like to see my book you can below. We’ll order it when they have a 50% off offer {which they do a couple times a year}. And great news, if you decide to buy a book with my Mixbook referral link you get $20 off your first purchase {and I get a referral credit – woo hoo win win!}.
Now that I’ve got the Kindergarten book done, I’ll work on the Primrose years. I’m planning on creating two books, one for the pre-uniform years and one for the uniform years. You could do it annually, but we just want to have two books for now. Going forward, I can scan the art weekly or monthly for easy creation at the end of the year.
Now it’s your turn
Let me know in the comments below how you organize your kids art or what do you think of my Mixbook idea?
