Do you remember your parents proudly collecting and gluing your finger paintings, drawings, craft creations and records of achievement into a big scrapbook? Do you do the same for your children, nieces, nephews or grandkids? This blog post steps you through the process of converting a towering stack of your mini-Picasso’s artwork into a precious annual art book tradition.
Preparing the artwork
- Make it a weekly habit to file your children’s artwork as they create it or bring it home.
- Write their name and the creation date on the back in pencil, so it doesn’t show through to the other side.
- Store the artwork in chronological order in a dedicated box or cupboard and place some weight on the top of the stack to flatten the paper, so it’s ready for scanning.
- When selecting the artwork to include in the book, aim for 25 to 50 images. Remember you only need to show a representation of their art not every piece!
- Once you’ve curated your selection, it’s time to scan the artwork. For best results use our suggested scanner settings listed below.
- If the sheet is too large to fit on the scanner or it’s a 3D object, simply photograph it. Use a white table or large sheet of paper to keep the background consistent.
- If you choose to do some basic edits, use the brightness/contrast tool in Photoshop (or similar) to make the background whiter and to fade out paper creases or marks.
- To tell the full story of your child’s year, it’s fun to also include some photos of them. Copy and paste 25-50 of the best from your digital photo collection into a new folder.
Designing an Art Book
- Now its time to open Momento’s software and start a book with 50-100 blank pages. If most of the artwork is in landscape orientation create a landscape book.
- Keep life simple and your design stylish with an average of one artwork or photo on one page, and showcase hero landscape images by spanning it over two pages.
- Feature their #1 artwork on the front cover and a photo on them on the back, and ensure their name and the year appears on the cover and spine for easy identification
- Include some text as captions, paragraphs or headings to give the images more context, but choose a font that complements the artwork, like a handwritten font.
- VIP: When you’ve finished designing, go to Finish View to carefully check and correct every Warning message, then review your Proof PDF thoroughly before uploading.
- For the perfect presentation, choose Lay-flat Lustre paper for Portrait books, and place them in a matching Printed Clamshell box so they’ll be preserved for decades.
- Don’t forget to enjoy and capture the moment your child first opens their book and sees all their work printed in a professional looking publication … it’s priceless!
For inspiration step through every page of these cute art books
- Zoi’s Art and Creative Play Book
- Jessica’s Art Collection 2015-2016
- Sam’s Art Collection 2014
- Abby’s Art Collection 2013
Scanner settings
If you choose to scan them yourself, these scanner settings will give you the best results:
- File size: 2000 x 1500 pixels minimum
- Dots per inch: DPI determines how big you can print a scanned image.
- Scan 300 dpi if you plan to print the image at its original size
- Scan at 600 dpi if you plan to print the image at twice its original size
- Scan at 900 dpi if you want to enlarge a photo to fill a whole A4 page
- File format: Save as a JPG or TIFF with a minimum quality setting of 8 or 80%
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