Organizing Artwork and Keepsakes

Go digital. Have your child pose w/the artwork, click the picture and keep a CD going of artwork over the years. Now your child can toss it to make room for future pieces and you'll have a record of it for life.

Hi K.,
I use scrapbooking and shadowboxes for many of my child's keepsakes. There are also some beautiful keepsake boxes at Things Remembered that you can have the date engraved on. I have purchased the birth certificate holder, first curl, first tooth in a maple box from there before. Also try E-Bay if you can't find them in the stores. They go fast and are hard to keep in the stores. It can be a lot of fun storing and displaying your child's keepsakes. If you are storing something like a Christening gown, you may want to have it drycleaned and stored in a plastic bag to preserve it, unless you put it in an airtight shadowbox (which can be very large to hang on the wall). Michael's Arts and Crafts store has some great boxes. They also can do the airtight mounting for you. It's pricy, but worth it to keep the clothes from yellowing. Good luck!

I only keep the milestones; things w/hand or footprints, first time draw a complete self portrait, mother's day/father's day art. And nothing with food glued to it. I have a large accordian like file that is specifically for artwork (I think I ordered it off the internet) and it works great for storing my daughters artwork. I like the digital idea but I would still keep the originals. In my teens and 20's I thought my mom was silly for keeping all that stuff, but now that I have my own child I want to go back and show her the things I did as a child. I hope this helps a little bit. :)

Try www.ShareMyKidsArt.com - I love this website! It's free and lets you store and organize your children's art. The thing I like it about the most is it has these little buttons so that you can email or upload to your facebook wall pieces of art; this is really nice for us because we live in California and my parents live in Hawaii and my wife's parents live in NY. If one of our children create something we want to share with the grandparents, we simple press a button.

The only thing is you need to scan or photograph the art, which seems like a hassle but it's actually fairly easy. Good luck!

Hi K., Thanks for great question. Never forget those funny quotes from your kids! Start capturing them in beautiful quote cards that you can personalize and share. CREATE beautiful quote cards and personalize them with photos, fonts, and pretty colours. ORGANIZE your quote cards with dates, tag names, and personal notes. This way you can preserve your kids memorable collection.

Creative Memories makes a 12x15 scrapbook that will fit the larger size drawings. Contact me if you are interested. They are very pretty.