children's school and artwork - has anyone turned these into books

Unclutterer ForumsUnclutter Your Life in One WeekFoundationsGoing on a Sentimental Journey

children's school and artwork - has anyone turned these into books

(11 posts) (9 voices)

Started 1 year ago by maxinemarshall
Latest reply from lottielot
RSS feed for this topic

Overall Rating: votes

Tags:

No tags yet.

maxinemarshall
Member

I have quite a bit of my children's school and artwork stored in our cellar. I have seen photobooks people have created, the ones where you arrange digital photos onto pages and then organise for the book to be printed.

Has anyone ever done this with artwork and other school work by taking photos of the things or scanning them. At some point it would also be possible to do the same with school reports.

I have no experience with this, but it looks like a lot of work that may be worthwhile. I'd just be interested to know if anyone has had any experience with a similar project. I'd be interested to know if you felt the time you invested was worth the finished product.

Posted 1 year ago #
Rosa
Member

I haven't done the digital thing, but I pick and choose exceptional pieces and put them into a binder as we go, so they are in chronological order. I don't store artwork other than in the binder, though I do package up quite a bit and ship it off to grandparents.

The folks I know who take a lot of digital photos & "scrapbook" them tend to print out the finished project, not just keep it digital, but I'm sure they'd say it's worth the time, as would any hobbyist.

Posted 1 year ago #
Jacquie
Member

"I'd be interested to know if you felt the time you invested was worth the finished product."

Depends how long you take doing it, and how much you want the end product. It's the sort of decision you have to evaluate for yourself.

Posted 1 year ago #
lottielot
Member

I do this with photos, I've also done it with a children's book I made. There's plenty of online companies which let you upload images (which could be photos or scans) and arrange them into book format, it's not complicated or particularly time-consuming. I also did a hard copy format a few years back for my parents. I bought a nice book, stuck in a load of artwork the kids did and some photos, put the lot into a pretty box and stuck some more artwork on the front cover. Made a great present and got the stuff out of my house :)

Posted 1 year ago #
STLMom
Member

A woman in my painting class took photos of all her artwork and had it made into a book. It was lovely! At the time, I just thought that I haven't finished enough pieces to make a book. But now that you've brought it up, my kids have created more than enough!
My daughter has a terrible time giving up anything she has made, but this might be a way to get her to part with at least a few items. I think that having a professional-looking book would influence her more than a stack of photos of her work.
The key for me is to just start doing it, not spend days searching the internet for tips on photographing artwork and reading reviews of every photo-book store on the web. I could really over-think this, and then it would NOT be worth the time and effort!

Posted 1 year ago #
Mimi
Member

thank you, maxine, for this idea. i already scan all my pictures but i never knew what to do with all the paintings that my mom gave me when i left my parents house. this is great... i am very confident with my scanned photoalbums and i think now i will scan all the other memories like birth announcement, school certificates, paintings etc. once they are scanned you can create a book, but i especially like the digital data as i don´t need a shelf to store it.

Posted 1 year ago #
maxinemarshall
Member

Since starting this thread, further ideas have popped into my head. My children write notes to the tooth fairy, and the tooth fairy writes back. She gives excellent advice! I have all the tooth fairy correspondence for the 17 teeth my children have lost. When they are done with losing their teeth, I think I may scan all this correspondence and turn them into a book. I think it is one thing to scan this stuff, but for me, the magic would be to turn it into a book. I know my children and other family members would get much pleasure from such books.

For the record, I personally own less than 10 books, mostly just reference books and a couple of heavily used cook books, but the tooth fairy book would be a welcome addition.

I think also a school report book would be good. My kids often ask to see their old reports. I don't ever let them have the originals, I just copy them for the kids and then they read and read them, in the car, in bed or wherever and they get trashed. Perhaps I will wait until they have finished school until I do that one.

Posted 1 year ago #
ldanker
Member

I made books of my daughter's artwork for Christmas presents for the grandparents and they absolutely LOVED them. I took about 20 different pictures she had created over the year and scanned them in. Then I found a few pictures of some other types of artwork she had done, like her gingerbread house, and added those. Then I put them together in the book and ordered it. It turned out really well, and I know I'm going to be glad to have it, and feel better about getting rid of all the other artwork that she creates on a daily basis.

Posted 1 year ago #
CR
Member

I'd love to do a photobook of my child's artwork, but does anyone have any suggestions about how to get oversized artwork scanned? I have quite a few drawings and paintings from my child's preschool years that are on 18 x 24 paper -- some even bigger! My scanner is just not big enough to handle these pieces. I tried taking photos but the results were unimpressive. (I'm not much of a photographer.) If anyone has a good online or other service to recommend that would be great!

Posted 1 year ago #
SunshineR
Member

Hi, CR. I haven't scanned large artwork, but maybe a printery or place like Kinko's (am I allowed to mention store names?) could scan a sample piece, and let you see onscreen how it looks in various "downsizes" before you have it printed in color. The price per page will probably go according to size, thickness and color of paper you wish to use for the printing.

(My DBF is an artist and sometimes he needs to resize work. That's how I learned about the method.) Good luck, and maybe others will have ideas for you too. Those pieces of child's artwork are precious memories.

Posted 1 year ago #
lottielot
Member

sounds like a good idea sunshineR. Most of my kids's stuff is smaller but bigger things I've framed and hung on the walls. My son and I did a 'crazy collage' last year which looks great on the wall! I don't save too many artworks, maybe a couple a year tops. Less is more, unless it's something amazing then I usually end up chucking it. I also occasionally give ds2 canvases to paint on as they're easy to hang and look better than framed pictures.
If you're photographing something like that then lighting is all-important, try different lighting conditions and messing round with the camera settings.

Posted 1 year ago #

Reply

You must log in to post. If you do not already have an account, you can register here.