5 Ways How Parents Can Digitize Their Children’s Artistic Works For Future References

Musa Mawanda, Ph. D
Parenting Issues
Published in
5 min readOct 30, 2020

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Have you ever looked at your child’s artwork? If not, then you are probably missing out on something great. And if you do, how about finding ways to store it securely? Their small piece of art can be placed on the wall or sits nicely with the refrigerator’s door magnet. But then, at one point, you will run out of space to store your child’s artwork.

Photo Credit: Elena Mozhvilo

On the one hand, you would love to see your child growing up with the paintings but somewhere you will see them grow through it. Perhaps, this is possible when you make their artwork a beautiful memory and not just a piece to hang it somewhere.

During the global lockdown amidst the pandemic, many experts and leading declutter started debating children’s artwork and storage and preservation issues. There are plenty of good options in the digital era that can help you declutter your home while saving your little one’s talent.

1. Start with Organizing and Capturing It On Mobile

If your children are grown up or have older children in school, you can begin by organizing your work of art. Do it with your child to make it enjoyable. I’m sure there’ll be some tears and laughter.

  • Start by collecting all your child’s artwork. Start from the oldest ones if you have.
  • Now try to pick out the best and complete pieces. Perhaps, you’ll need to set the boundaries and consider the ones that appeal to you.
  • Next, you must categorize the artwork based on their age. You may have some that were since their pre-school, elementary, or middle school, including their pieces for the special art projects.
  • Be clear on what you select, omitting anything that holds little or no meaning for your child.

Once you are done sorting the drawings, you must then click pictures of it. These pictures should go to your hard drives or anywhere on the cloud. Make sure you date the art, if possible so that you can associate it with the picture.

2. Start a Family Blog

Families stay connected in many ways, and one of the most innovative ways is to run a blog. Running a blog allows families to share thoughts and events, record milestones and achievements, and post-family calendar updates.

You can have the host website to start a family blog; it can be either WordPress or Wix. These are intuitive and user-friendly options. It is best to go for the ones that can easily modify your website’s look and add media to share with your family with user-friendly website constructors.

Give your family members access, and then all your relatives can post on the site. The idea is to upload the artwork your child creates as a blog and document the whole process, if possible.

It is a great storytelling way for any parent to document the child’s artwork digitally and create a lasting memory. With a blog, you can have no limitations on words and thereby document the art memories better.

3. Use Lugelo

If you are looking for something phenomenal in today’s time, then it has to be the app to store your child’s artwork digitally. Lugelo is a free online journal that can help parents record, store, and share key childhood moments that later on memories.

I’d highly recommend this app for the simplicity it offers in terms of sharing the artwork with friends, close relatives, and within the community. The best part is that it has privacy settings, too, if you are too sensitive about sharing your child’s artwork with anyone else. Lugelo offers parents with highly simple yet intuitive storytelling experience.

It is relatively easy to record your child’s artwork on Lugelo. There are mere five simple steps for you to follow:

Step 1: Download App and Click on the ‘Add Story’ icon visible on the home screen.

Step 2: Upload the image you have clicked using the mobile phone and click on ‘Save.’

Step 3: You can now see the story in your profile with a title. In this case, it is Binny’s Art #27.

Step 4: Now, you can see the text ‘add moment.’ This is where you can add additional pictures to support the art and add more information to make it more meaningful. Click on the ‘Add Moment’ to customize your Lugelo journal entry.

Step 5: Click on Save. You have now perfectly saved your child’s artwork digitally.

4. Create a Digital Photo Book

There are many ways to create a digital book, one of which involves putting it up in the SD memory card and have the digital photo frame as a showpiece in your lounge area. This can be a convenient photo book on display without taking too much of your space.

I’d recommend you refer back to tip #1, as mentioned above. This way, you will be able to sort out the artwork that matters to you and your child.

  • Make a collage of old artwork and let it run as a slider on the digital book.
  • Consider taking pictures of your child holding the painting and saving it for the future.
  • Start categorizing the artwork in the digital book with labels like date, grade, and artwork title.

Start rating your child’s artwork with the score below the piece and document it digitally over the photo book.

5. Use Social Media

Perhaps, the most obvious of ways for parents to start storing their child’s artwork digitally. This method comes at a cost since you don’t own the social media.

The privacy is at stake, coupled with uncertainty regarding how long the platform may last. On the plus side, you can always use the filters that social media offers to enhance your child’s art and put it up online for others to see and comment on it.

If you have a comforting social circle on Instagram and Facebook, I’d recommend you to put your child’s artwork over there and see what people think about it.

Conclusion

Pick up the method that best suits your way and start digitizing your child’s artwork. The best practice can be any, simply stacking up pictures on Google Drive or using Lugelo App. It all boils down to the most convenient yet effective way for you to save your child’s artwork digitally. Make sure you put some efforts to create a meaningful memory out of your little one’s art that you’d love to cherish for the times to come.

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Musa Mawanda, Ph. D
Parenting Issues

Founder and CEO of Lugelo, Inc. a mobile and web app for private journals & storybooks. Webapp: https://www.lugelo.com. Medium.com/@lugelo. Twitter: @mylugelo.