Tiny Treasures in "Miniature"

If you have children in your life, you're probably almost as proud of their artwork as you are their photographs! Sometimes I photograph or scan Jonathan's artwork*, to email out to family, but I can't part with the originals. (I am also having difficulty storing all the paper and artwork he comes home with, he doesn't want to throw anything away (even all the practice letter sheets, etc) definitely gets that packrat tendency from his dad and I!


I've been meaning to make this for a few months now, but I finally got around to it this weekend: Create a portable keepsake of your child's "most braggable" creations in miniature by scanning, reducing, and printing out their paintings and drawings, then cutting them down to size, and stowing them in a decorated tin. (This size is much more manageable) :) Makes a great gift to send to the relatives, and send more scaled down "originals" over time as they are made and on holidays to add to their collection!

Scale your pics to approx 2" x 3.5", then stamp on your label from "What's In Your Tin? 1" and trim. Choose a favorite drawing for the top and stamp "Tiny Treasures" on that. Make a label for the inside on which the child can sign his or her name ( see below, I inked up just the "made this" from the "I made this for you" stamp from the same set to put below his name) On the back of each you can write their name, age and "title" of their masterpiece or your (or the child's) description of it. Here's Jonathan's "Red eyed tree frog":I intended to send this to his grandma, but Jonathan came into the room, took one look at it and he said, "My ART! Thanks!!" and ran out the door with it (so now I guess I need to make another one!) I found him in his room leafing through them and he looked up and said, "It is so amazing that I made these..." (Gets his modesty from his mom LOL!! ;)

TIP: You could also make two of each work of art, for a little matching game, would make a nice little travel game tin for your budding artist. :)

*Jonathan is a freakin' art prodigy! IMHO... ;) Here's a little about the ones you see above that I really like, for different reasons (please indulge me for a moment!)

One day when he was 4 he picked up a pencil and divided a sheet of paper into 4 sections with an "x". Then he proceeded to fill the entire page with shapes and color(my Su! markers! he chose the colors, have SCS seens this color challenge yet?? Pink passion, Green Galore, and Going Gray ;)), I was really amazed at how well he balanced the colors and sizes! When I asked him about it, he explained they were "animal textures", this side being "fish scales, this is giraffe, and this is zebra". I thought it was so cool he'd created a kind of collage! Below is the second in what I call his "Quadrant Period" LOL! which is very similar to that first one I just described, he gave it to his grandfather) but this time he mixed the different textures into all four areas...

Here is a crayon drawing he did recently after looking through a prism...I love the way he always fill up the whole page...

He really surprised us last November when we asked him one night at dinner what they did in art that day(kindergarten), and he recounted with amazing detail a film they saw about "Leonardo", including "his flying machine", the "clay horse sculpture shot at with arrows by the soldiers", and "his backward writing"(this is not the kind of stuff they taught me about in kindergarten!) We encouraged him to go give the writing a try so he went and got paper and a marker and quickly wrote his name (in reverse, beginning with "N") without help or aid of a mirror!(or looking at his name forwards) We went to the bathroom to check the results, I just had to snap a pic of him to show his teacher :)

Sidewalk artist: he did this by himself, at age 4(almost 5) Part way through I asked him what he was making, he said, "a girl' s face, with a long braid..."
Can you see it now?(I went over the different planes of her face in my Photoshop here, I'm not imagining it , am I??)
Okay, maybe it is just because he's my son, but I think he rocks! ;) It made his day anyway that I posted his creations here on my blog, thanks for looking :)

Have a great day!