My Littles are now 5 and 7 and they LOVE art. They love making it and have since they were babies. And I love looking at it and can’t bring myself to throw out the pretty pieces, including chalk drawings from my son when he was 18 months old that don’t really look like much.
We keep an Ikea hack cork frame in our kitchen for kid art, which we proudly display on a rotating basis. It’s nice to keep it curated but my craft closet is overflowing with bins of art. I needed a solution!
This neat idea didn’t take much time or expense. I’ve seen some services that charge about $200. I wanted to find a less expensive solution. For about $25 and an hour or two of my time, I ended up turning tons of pictures and canvas prints into cute little art books, based on the year the art was created. You, too, can take stacks of art and make them keepsake forever books. I hold onto some of my favorites but this will make room in my bins for more art over the next few years.
Here’s how I made Kid Art Photos Books.
- First, I bought a very inexpensive white presentation board for my photoshoot background, like this one.
- I happen to have some lighting that I used to brighten up the images. I take enough pictures of my kids I wanted to have them for pumpkin patch and other pics. If you don’t have lighting, do this in a well lit room, preferably during mid-day where you can get a lot of natural light.
- Next, I got my camera ready (an older version of this one), and pulled out a huge stack of my 2020 art collection. Here is some of the art (copyright Abbotts 2020 🙂 that I used.
- Then, one by one I put a piece of art on the board, taped the back down where I really needed them flatter, and started snapping pictures.
- I uploaded all of my images to my computer, where I could brighten the images a little to enhance the fun and bright kid colors.
- Then I searched for Photo Book deals. Shutterfly, Target Photo and Costco all had good deals, but I went with the Costco option.
- Finally, I uploaded, ordered and waited 5 days to get my books.
I love these little albums. They are great for grandparent gifts, and I now have so much space savings that I can stock up on more art.
I’d love to know if others try this and how your albums turn out.
