How to deal with the endless supply of art projects has been an issue for me since the moment my oldest first held a crayola in his chubby toddler fingers.
Last year, contributor Angela Barako shared with us a great solution to this problem when she showed us how she used these giant posterboard envelopes to store the most prized samples of her children’s artwork. I tried the idea for myself and I have to say that it is fantastic! They were easy to make and, thanks to some darling chevron duct tape in the dollar section at Target, mine even came out looking cute!
The problem with this plan arose however when my kindergarten/aspiring- artist son cracked the code to my system. The day came when he discovered a Spiderman coloring page (one of about 600 he had done that week) in the trash. With large, sad, puppy-like eyes he looked up at me in despair, “Are you saying you didn’t want to save THIS ONE TOO? You don’t LIKE this one THE BEST?!”
What was I to do? The answer was to be found on my I-phone.
Thanks to a tip from a mom-friend, I discovered my new “can’t-live-without” app: Artkive!
Artkive allows you to take pictures of your child’s art with your phone. You can then store and sort photos of the artwork into electronic albums organized by child and by date.
The best part: once you’ve taken the photo and added it to the album, the original art can go straight to the garbage can without any guilt! Once I explained the new system, even my son was on board with the plan.
At the end of the year, the app lets you create a physical album of all the artwork you’ve archived, which, if I’m being honest, is probably something I would never get around to doing on my own.
So, while I still do love my poster-board envelope system for those times when I just need to hold on to the original; (I just can’t throw out a Christmas tree made of preschool handprints!) I am so grateful I discovered this app to take care of storing everything else!
Artkive is available as a FREE download for i-phones and Androids. And just so ya know- I didn’t receive any financial compensation for this post— I just want to help my fellow mommies who love clearing the clutter as much as I do!
