School Albums: Incorporating School Art Projects

Hey everyone! I'm here a little later than planned, but wanted to do a super quick share with you today. It's related to my girl's school albums, and how I finally got around to incorporating their larger art projects that have been stored away in my closet forever and a day.

I have done many posts on my school albums over the years, as they're one of the projects that I have managed to keep up with on a very regular basis. You can see all of my blog posts related to school albums HERE - just scroll past the first two posts, as those were about my own high school days album I put together last year. I did just notice that the last time I really shared anything on the girl's albums was over three years ago. Seeing that Sarah is about to graduate from high school in a few months, maybe I'll do another post, as I finish up her albums. 

One of the things that I never managed to tackle was all of their larger art projects, or pretty much anything that was larger than a regular piece of paper. I've had this huge pile of projects in my closet for years. We're talking from back when they were in elementary school, so a good 10+ years. 

  

I pretty much knew what my plan would be for those projects all along, but it took me those 10+ years to actually get around to it. I believe it was last summer when I finally took that pile out and tackled it. I knew that I wanted to simply take photos of the projects, and then I would incorporate those photos of the projects into their school albums. 

I laid a panel of white bead board on the floor, and simply laid each project on the board and took a photo with my phone. I'll be honest, in that when it comes to photographing certain types of projects, my iPhone does a better job then my actual DSLR camera. And it's easy and convenient. 

I then edited my photos right on my iPhone (using the PicTapGo app), and then uploaded them to Dropbox, thru the app on my phone. Once they were done uploading, I was able to simply grab them out of Dropbox on my laptop. I then cropped them to either 3x4" or 4x4", depending on what worked best for each photo.

It took me several months to get around to ordering the photos. Mostly because I had uploaded them to a site I don't order from that often, but that I had credits for. I finally placed an order in January, and was excited to be able to check this project off my list. 

I started by sorting them out - figuring which belonged to Alyssa and which belonged to Sarah, and doing my best to figure out what grade they created them in. One of the biggest tips I can give, regarding memorabilia and school work, is to write your child's age and grade (or the year) on the back of any papers you save. You think you'll remember it all, or keep it organized and in order. But you won't remember it all, and stuff gets out of order and disorganized when you're not looking ;)

I knew that I wanted to keep this super simple. Because truth be told, that's how the girl's school albums are. They're simple, with little to no fuss, because I knew that's the only way I would be able to keep up with them. I thought about slipping the photos into pocket pages, and adding those pages into their albums. But some years had only a few photos, so that didn't really make sense. 

I finally decided to just adhere the photos to black cardstock, trimming the cardstock down to whatever size worked with the amount of photos I had for each year. All of the pages are 12" in height, but they have varying widths. The ones above have 4x4" photos, so they're 5" wide.

Some of the years only have photos on the front, and some also have photos on the backside. Just depends on how many photos I had that year. And these pretty much cover Kindergarten - 4th or 5th grade. I didn't really have any large projects once they hit 6th grade. They most certainly did do projects after that, but they were usually posterboard or presentation board type projects. And I was pretty good about taking photos of those projects over the years, so those will be included in the albums as well. 

To keep things simple, I die cut the word "art" to add to each page. I used the Weathered Door alpha kit from Kerri Bradford Studio, and die cut them from white graph patterned paper using my Silhouette Cameo. I was originally thinking I would die cut the grade as well - so that it would read "first grade art", "second grade art", etc. But since I had adhered the photos first, without knowing the rest of my plan, I really only had room to put "art". 

These will all get inserted into the girl's school albums, right alongside the rest of the memorabilia from each individual grade. Easy peasy, right? 

If you happen to follow Becky Higgins on Instagram, she just did a ton of Insta Stories last weekend, as she was doing something along these lines for her kid's albums. I know those little snippets of videos are no longer there to view, but I do believe she'll be sharing a blog post soon about the subject (or maybe she's doing a Facebook Live video - I can't remember), and usually, those Insta Stories videos do end up on her YouTube channel at some point. Lots of good advice, and a lot of it really does line up with my way of thinking as well - so I always enjoy hearing about the "why" and "how" of her process. 

Comments

[Mendi Yoshikawa]

So awesome (and so inspiring). I would love to get around to this someday for my own kids. It got so overwhelming that I hardly keep anything anymore. My girls refer to me as the garbage monster. ;)

[LisaME]

I love this! My daughter is only in first grade, but between daycare and elementary school, I have a giant bin of art projects! I have been taking pictures for a few years, but wasn't really sure what to do next. Thanks for the great, but easy idea!0

[Carolyn E]

Love! I currently have a small pile for my youngest (he's in K) and a big pile of my oldest son's artwork, who's in 8th! I was thinking of doing something easy and simple, and this fits!

Also wanted to let you know that since I have 90% completed my school album, thanks to your inspiration, I have received my husband's school pictures and I'm currently working through them! It'll be awesome to have school albums for both of us, next to our kids' albums :)