Like a lot of other moms out there, I am swamped with my kids art work.  K especially loves to paint and can turn out 5 paintings at a sitting.  These paintings are usually done on some strange size paper 9x12 or even larger and can make storing them difficult and scrapbooking them bulky.

A few days ago, I suggested to K that she paint what she'd thought she see on our upcoming vacation and she turned out 5 more paintings to add to our evergrowing collection.

Rather than scrap the bulky, original artwork, I photographed it making sure to stand over top of the artwork so it was square to the camera.  I then loaded them into Photoshop and adjusted the levels.  Often this is necessary because your camera wants to average the photo to a mid-grey and if the painting has vibrant colors or little white space, things can be off colorwise.  Next I cropped out the carpet so only the painting was showing (the painting aspect ratio and the camera aspect ratio aren't the same so some carpet was visible).  Finally I added an overlay frame with the title of the painting (sometimes necessary if you can't figure out what the painting is) and printed them on 4x6 photo paper.  I also created a 4x6 journal block and then inserted all 6 images into a 12x12 photo protector page (you can get these from a variety of sources in different brands such as We R Memory Keepers, Fancy Pants Design, Pebbles Inc).

And this is the page that got inserted into K's scrapbook which takes up less space and is a permanent record of her art.  K loves it!