Disclosure:: This post is sponsored by Artebula.
Parenting Win :: How to Quickly and Easily Organize Your Kid’s Art for FREE with the Artebula App
My husband is an artist, so one of our core values as a family is creative expression. We do things like “Family Art Time” in which we all sit at the table together while individually creating. One of our favorite activities to do with our boys is to take turns working on a particular piece together. One of the boys will start drawing with pen, marker or pencil and then we will add on to the piece taking turns going back and forth in collaboration until we decide the piece is finished. The only rule is that you can’t draw over something the other one drew.
Art time is one of our favorite family activities because…
- We can all do it. As long as a child is old enough to sit up and hold a crayon they can participate, but it’s still an activity older kids can also enjoy.
- It is easy and in-expensive. All you need for family art time is plain paper and markers, crayons, pens, paint or colored pencils. There aren’t a lot of fussy or expensive materials involved unless you want to explore more in-depth and mature projects.
- Personal development. Through creating we have helped build confidence in our kids, helped them learn how to express their thoughts, taught a skill and how to improve with practice, shown how to turn their mistakes into something beautiful, helped them to be decisive and more.
As you can see, there are many reasons to love family art time. The only downside is that since we spend so much time creating in our house, I end up with stacks and stacks of artwork that I don’t know what to with. We live in a smaller home in the city with very limited storage so I try to only save a few special pieces for each child. But often, each of my three children will create multiple pieces in a day leaving me with a stack of papers and no where to put them. I usually tidy up the pieces at the end of the day into a pile, and then hide said pile somewhere not so obvious, if by 24 hours later the kids haven’t come looking for their art, I toss the pile (GASP- I know, there is so much mom guilt involved with this!). My husband has caught on to my secret and calls me “The Terminator” because of how quick I am to toss things out. Every now and then the kids will come looking for their work a few days later and I feel awful at having gotten rid of it, but in reality, I just can’t save everything so I continue to purge items, whispering prayers that the pieces I toss will be out of sight and out of mind.
Recently, I found out about the Artebula app and am so excited to have a solution to my art surplus dilemma. Artebula is a FREE app on which you can easily store and organize your children’s artwork (HALELUJAH!). It is super easy to use and has already saved me from awkward conversations when my kids came looking for their art. Within a matter of minutes I was able to set up a profile for each child, then within each of their profiles I created folders to divide up their artwork (I chose to create a folder for each year). Then I simply took pictures of each piece of art, used the quick and easy editing feature when I wanted, and woila, I have their art saved in a fun app that my kids love to scroll through and enjoy their work.
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My favorite things about Artebula are…
1. Eliminating clutter. With all of my kid’s artwork stored in the app I have been free and without guilt to throw away piles of artwork cleaning out our supply cabinet. Also, bulky 3-D pieces (my kids like to create a lot of art from cardboard and other scraps) are now stored easily in a digital file rather than cluttering up our home.
2. Easy organization. With different profiles for each kid and folders under each child’s profile I can easily store and categorize their work, making it easy to find later.
3. Products. Once the art is stored on the app, it is easy to select individual pieces to create a hard cover book or a poster featuring multiple pieces of art. The photo books make great gifts for grandparents or are fun for the kids to keep and remember their creations. The posters can be proudly displayed in their rooms, showcasing several pieces of artwork in an organized format.
With the stay-at-home order in effect, we have all been spending lots of extra time in our homes and our children have been at work making new creations. This is the perfect time to give Artebula a try and eliminate pile up throughout our homes.
