I have figured out a way to "save" and store children's artwork without actually saving it.

 It's the end of the school year for our family and we have garnered piles of glittery-glued on-painted-handmade craft projects. Each of my children made many wonderful pieces of artwork that we have been able to treasure all year long. In particular, Muffin Tin Boy made a handful of Letter Of The Week craft projects and I have saved them all. But, most of them are 3D masterpieces that well, take up quite a bit of room. I knew we just couldn't keep every single one and yet, I wanted to be able to have keepsakes from the year. Well,  I have figured out a way to "save" their artwork without actually saving it. 

Create a photo "ABC" book. 

I started with an inexpensive photo album from our local big box craft store (Michael's). They are around $1.99. I happened to have mine on hand for this project.

Next, I snapped several photos of Muffin Tin Boy's artwork and letter of the week projects. I printed them out at home using my HP photo printer and slide them inside the album. I then realized that we were missing a few letters of the alphabet.....hmmm.....what to do....I then realized we could make our very own "letters of the week" to fill in the missing ones by tracing out the letters on his artwork.

I snapped photos of the rest of the artwork that I didn't necessarily want to keep, but wanted to remember. We went through most of them together and the kids decided what projects they loved the most, I set a limit of 2-3 and they got to keep the originals in a large flat box. So now, my little 4x6 photo book holds a year's worth of crafts! IT's compact and lightweight and I still get the benefit of off he craft projects without all of the erm, clutter.

For more, visit these great posts on organizing and storing children's artowrk: