Artkive

What to do with all the art? 

I've come to realize this is a fairly common problem for parents whose children come home from daycare, preschool, grade school and beyond with arm fulls of their latest creations and artful masterpieces.  And so begins the ongoing struggle of storing, preserving and displaying the "favorites" while forcing yourself to let go of the majority.

We have a couple of solutions for the never-ending art in Jackson's playroom.  Like this gallery wall:

And this frame from Target with built in storage and a hinged cover to allow for easy exchanges:

Yet, just a few months ago, the pile of projects Jackson had brought home from school looked like this:

I had great intentions of taking a photo of each piece so I could at least store it digitally before tossing the original, but instead the pile just grew and grew and grew.

Then I stumbled upon the app, Artkive.  It's as simple as snapping a picture on your phone, tagging the images with details such as your child's name, grade or the date it was created and saving it for future use.  From there, you can print the images or turn them into a photo book, calendar or the like. 

I downloaded it immediately and while Jackson was occupied with a cartoon one Saturday morning I managed to "artkive" the entire pile of art.

I draped a black piece of fabric across our coffee table to serve as a solid background and snapped away.  Of course, I held onto a few of my very favorites but by the end of my 30-minute session I was ready to part with this entire pile.

And here is what was left.

All filed away nice and neat.

Now that I've got the initial stack taken care of, staying on top of the incoming flow of art is super easy.  I just snap a few pics right from my phone as the projects come home.  Piece of cake!

I think I'll wait until Jackson starts Kindergarten and then I can turn all of his Princeton projects into one pre school-years keepsake book.  Cool, right?

So, what are you waiting for?  Go to the app store!