I would imagine that anyone who has a young child in child care or school has the same problem we are developing... So much artwork! In the beginning, Thomas was probably only capable of a few crayon scratches on paper, so there wasn't too much thought into what needed to be kept or tossed. But as his art skills increased, so did the difficulty in deciding what to keep. I can't imagine that he is going to want five boxes full of old artwork as a high school graduation present.
We lost most of the really old artwork in the move to Alaska, but the collection has been slowly building up again. I finally decided it was time to tackle the stack. I read a bunch of neat ideas how to preserve the memories while minimizing the clutter - almost all of these rely on digital copies of the artwork with the idea being you keep a few that you really like for posterity. Some of the smaller letter sized ones can be scanned, but most of the stuff he has been bringing home has been larger than our scanner. Yikes!
So I decided to try photographing them instead. I did my best to flatten everything out by piling it up and setting some weight on the top for a few days. It was moderately successful and today I took a stab at getting them all photographed. When I had them out on the table trying to remember what order they might have been created, Thomas wandered over and got super excited when he the pile and exclaimed "my artwork!"
He dug through the pile and showed me various treasures he had created. He was especially interested in a few pieces - which means they are likely going in the keep pile. I thought it was awesome he found one of the first ones he "made" from his day care back in Houston. It was made from his handprints and he was holding it up to his hand seeing the size difference. Adorable!
This is the reconstructed flower hand art. Some repairs were needed for several of them - scotch tape won't hold pipe cleaners in place forever. And googly eyes apparently prefer something stronger than hot glue to hold them in place. We had a lot of missing eyes!
We had quite a bit of fall themed artwork and these bats were some of my favorites! So colorful for bats! I always wonder how much help he has on these projects. I think I can see more of his influence on the newer pieces compared to last year. Though I still don't think he has mastered getting the eyes on so neatly - I seriously doubt he did those...
See what I mean? Haha - got to love his creativity though!
One of my favorites and one of two jellyfish he has in the stack. They both lost an eye (darn hot glue!), so they shared for their photo session. I should probably just go buy a pack of assorted googly eyes to have on hand for repairs!
I think the photos turned out decent. Ideally you are supposed to use natural light and it was a bit cloudy today, but motivation and good lighting don't always show up on the same days, so we will take what we can get. :)