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Organizing Kids Artwork Into Wall Art

Lauren Cunningham

In yesterday’s blog post I talked about all the papers that come home in my kids’ backpacks each and every day and how to manage what to keep, what to toss, and where to put it all. So today, I want to share an idea I’m working on currently to organize my kids’ artwork into wall art.

I saw this idea on Pinterest years ago and can’t find a working link now to credit them – but it says the original owner is: kikis-list.blogspot.com. What a great idea, right?!

ELIMINATING PAPER CLUTTER

My daughter has loved art from a very young age – and she’s really good at it! So I have saved more of her artwork than anything else through the years.

But just putting her beautiful art in a file box isn’t displaying it in our home so we can enjoy it and she can show it off to others who come over. And what about the big art pieces that can’t fit in my file box?

So I’ve been starting the process of moving all of her artwork digital. I keep the small pieces as well, but then it frees me to toss the larger pieces and bulky projects since I have a record of them digitally. And it’s been SO simple, so I wanted to share my process with you.

HOW I MAKE ARTWORK DIGITAL

I found an open table in a room with natural light so I could turn all of the overhead lights off. I used my iPhone camera – the key is to hold still and get right on top of the art before you take the pic.

Then go into the pic you just took and click Edit. The two things I like to try first are:

  1. Editing the color on the picture – follow my arrows in the pic below left side and select the correct editor at the bottom tab first, then follow the yellow arrow above. Try the “Auto” wand button first and see if you like the change it makes. If you don’t, just de-select it and you can play with all of the color settings to the right.

  2. Cropping the picture – this is important because you don’t want to see any of your table in the background of the art. So clip the crop icon at the bottom tab and then follow the yellow arrows below to edit the edges of your photo, and even change the alignment if you didn’t get the shot straight on.

And here’s what I ended up with on another one of her pieces! Not bad!! You can see I had folded this one before to fit it in my storage. But going forward I will never have to do that agin – I will just take my iPhone pic first.

I’ll be sure to blog the after pic once we have our frame finalized. Right now I’ve been shopping for the perfect frame. This is my favorite frame I’ve found so far…I’m thinking about getting 2 or 3 and putting them side-by-side.

UPDATE!! Since I wrote this blog post we gave our playroom a major makeover and finalized our plans for rotating the kids’ artwork on the wall in there. Here’s where we ended up. We got these frames at IKEA…and they have plastic over the front instead of glass so they are amazing for a kids space. New school year, new art! I plan to let the kids pick out which of their art from last year they want to put in there now.

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