Finally there is a way to get help organizing all of your kids’ artwork.
By Dana Hostage
Have you unpacked your child’s backpack yet from the last day of school? What does one do with the backpack contents when it’s finally unpacked? With certainty, that stack of artwork the teachers sent home is in there and most moms will simply add it to the pile of artwork collected throughout the years.
What can you do with it? Rachel Ray had an interesting post by Katia Hetter on her blog about Purging Picassos. Katie suggests asking your kids which art pieces to keep and which to toss and explaining to them why the need to toss. What child would actually agree to throw out their masterpieces? We have all done it: tossed some art into the trash when no one is around hoping that you’ll never be asked to produce it again.
Katie’s other ideas are turning it into wrapping paper, making handmade cards, or using it as placemats. These are great ideas for crafty moms with a lot of time on their hands, but this only applies to some of the art not all of it and for most moms, time is not in abundance. Then there is the digicrafty idea. Take photos of the artwork. Not a good idea. Taking photos of artwork with flash photography creates terrible reproductions and is not something you’d ever want to view in print or digital form. May as well just keep the tub of artwork in the basement.
One tasteful idea that I like is to designate one wall in your home to display the artwork in frames and swap them out every 3 months or so but this is a short term solution and the art eventually ends up stuffed in a box anyway.
In 2000, when my husband and I were moving into our new home, we had our basement walls covered with the kids’ artwork and it was downright painful to take it all down because we knew once it came down, we’d probably never see it again. My husband, being in the printing industry, suggested that we turn it into a book so the kids could admire and show off their art. We were astonished to find that no company existed to do just that.
Several years later, I left my job at a major airline with the idea to start my own company, and in 2007 launched http://www.ArtimusArt.com . It is the first company of its kind to create a comprehensive printed archive of a child’s entire art collection in a museum quality, hard cover book and web gallery.
http://www.Artimusart.com scans the artwork at high resolution to create a professional art reproduction, then cleans and makes any necessary touch ups. The art is then posted to an online gallery, similar to what you find on photo sharing sites. It’s part DIY where you can log on and customize the book yourself in the gallery and part service oriented in that professionals are reproducing the artwork.
Artimus Art streamlined the process of creating a high quality custom book at an affordable price. By transforming your entire collection of childhood art into a book, parents are now justified in actually tossing the originals. Imagine doing that guilt free?
Dana Hostage is the founder of Artimus Art and holds a degree in Political Science from the University of Arizona. She currently lives in the Boston area with her husband and three children.
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