Preserve & Organize Kids Art with Shutterfly's Mini Masterpieces Photobook

On Parker's last day of school, I took the last of his art projects home, added them to the mountain of art we had accrued throughout the year and immediately realized that I needed a way to organize it all. I had been keeping everything in a huge box hidden away in P's closet and wanted to find a way to 1. get rid of all the paper and 2. display the artwork in an accessible place so we could easily look back at it. I turned to Pinterest to look for ideas because I knew there had to be a mommy blogger out there who has been in the same predicament with a brilliant solution. Not too long into my search I found a blog post from Liz Tamahana at Paislee Press and my brain was like, "DING DING DING! We have a winner!" Back in 2012, Liz designed a photobook for Shutterfly to organize her daughter's artwork. The photobook is simple with clean lines, lots of white space and there are a variety of photo layouts to choose from. The most time intensive part of this project was taking photos of all the artwork but the process was made easier with these tips from Snap Happy Mom.

I ended up putting together a 12x12 book with 20 pages and included not just pictures of artwork but also pictures of Parker's adventures throughout the year. Little man was so excited to see his art and photos in a book and I was so excited that I happened to put this book together during Shutterfly's 4th of July sale. Shutterfly is not promoting this post. I just love the product and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a simple way to get last year's artwork organized before the new school year starts in a few weeks!

Do you have any mom hacks that make transitioning into a new school year easier? I'd love to hear them!

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Cyanotype (Sun Paper Art) Toddler Art

One of my favorite things to do with Parker is walk around our neighborhood to collect things. He collects leaves, flowers and bugs. I collect Pokemon. It's great! So I bought some sun paper and we used the leaves, grass and flowers that Parker collected to create cyanotype prints. Follow along as I walk you through our creative process. 

Materials Needed

SunArt Paper

Plexiglass the size of your SunArt Paper (the paper I linked above comes with plexiglass)

Cardboard

Tray

Water

Instructions

Step 1: Collect some treasures from nature and arrange them as desired on top of your sun paper. I used pins to secure everything in place because I didn't have plexiglass. Next time we do this project, I will definitely use plexiglass to secure everything in place. Learn from my rookie mistake! This step should be done in a room with little light. 

Step 2: Take your paper outside and let it sit in the sun for 2-5 minutes. 

Step 3: Remove everything on the paper. It will look something like this. Kinda spooky.

Step 4: Completely soak paper in water bath for 1 minute. When you remove it from the water, it will look something like this. Cool right?

Step 5: Lay the paper flat to dry. Once it's dry, frame it and decorate your home. I decided to add it to my bedside shelf. It looks very sophisticated for kid art!

I hope you enjoyed this art project as much as we did. I still have a few packs of sun paper and want to repeat this project with feathers!