Jackson is now going to a preschool twice a week and a library story time once a week, which means we’ve had an influx of arts and crafts into the house. I felt horrible throwing away his artwork after displaying it, but what else am I supposed to with it? At this rate, by the end of the year I’ll have enough crafts for an episode of Hoarders. Just imagine the narrator: “she couldn’t bear to throw away any of those hard-earned crafts, so they just kept piling up. And piling up. Until the dog, Rex, was discovered fossilized under 6 feet of artwork.” I needed to find away to prevent my life story being aired on A&E.
I needed to find away to prevent my life story from being aired on A&E. Since I consider myself an iOS “app connoisseur,” I knew there would be an app for that. I found Artkive in the app store (only $2.99) and am thrilled to have a solution for the preschool-art-storage-problem. Using your phone’s camera you snap a picture of the art (one idea is to have your child hold the art for the picture) and fill in some details. You make profiles for each child and what grade they are in (left blank for Jackson since he isn’t in “school” yet) and when you upload your art into the app, simply give a brief description of the piece. For example, the picture below was Jackson’s art while we toured a preschool. In addition to creating profiles for both of my kids, I also made a “misc” profile for the artwork that other kids give Jackson & Sidney. I love having a digital archive of the special drawings their cousins send them.
Another great feature of the app is the sharing ability. Since we live 1,200 miles away from my family, I love apps that make it easy to share my kids’ lives with them. Artkive allows you to create a sharing circle and send pieces of art, or the entire gallery, to specific people’s email address or your entire circle at once. Easy peasy. The icing on the cake of Artkive is the ability to print books (and other products soon) of your child’s art once you reach a minimum of 20 pieces. I plan on printing a book for each school year and making copies for grandparents.
Find out more about Artkive here:
Do you have any tips for saving/storing your children’s artwork? I’d love to hear them, thanks!
PS. Artkive has no idea I’m writing this, I just loved the app and knew my Mom friends would too!
This is so helpful! I love finding out about new apps – pinning this right now to share – thank you!
Kirsten recently wrote Where Were You?
You think its bad now, wait until he starts elementary school….oh dear lord the papers!! I definitely need to check this out. Right now i have a small portable file box that I use during the year and clean out periodically. I never let it get beyond this one file box. At the end of the school year I’ll really go through it and pick out the best pieces to put in the binders I have in storage for each of them. (I swear its not as much work as it sounds!)
Liz {Learning to Juggle} recently wrote Thankful Thursday
This is so cute! I have an entire drawer full that I plan on “organizing” at the end of this preschool year…and then my little one started doing artwork too and I don’t know what to do with it all!
I love this! My husband gets so mad when I toss any of the art the kids have done. I do save selected pieces, but my son draws A LOT!! I can only stash away so many drawings of dinosaurs and alligators. My youngest puts a few dabs of watercolor on a page and calls it a day. Must I save 5 paintings all done in one day? This is a great option.
I actually have this app on my phone and haven’t used it yet. Why? Because even though I have a way to preserve B’s artwork, I still can’t bring myself to toss them! I need to suck it up and just start using it. I DO love it and love how you can make a book out of the pieces when you have a bunch!!
melissa at filling our bucket recently wrote 5 beauty products I’m loving right now! {Vlog}
Oh my goodness. I just checked out this app and it is awesome! Thank you so much! Art is such an intrigue part of our live and I love that I can use this to savor every moment!
mel recently wrote Dollar General and P&G Honor Every Day Heroes in February- #Giveaway!