Disclaimer: I received a free Artkive book in exchange for this blog post. All opinions are my own honest evaluation of the book. The link inside is a referral link. I will earn at no extra cost to you if you decide to purchase an Artkive book. Thanks for your support!
One thing we love to do in our homeschool is art. I’ve talked about this several times before, on Instagram and in my emails, but one of my great joys in life has been rediscovering art. Because of those two factors, one thing that happens at the end of the school year is that we suddenly find we have accumulated a lot of art. This is where Artkive was able to help me out!
I’ve tried several different methods of displaying art before with mixed results. All of them I love initially, but then they lose their luster. This year, I decided to try something new. I decided to use Artkive to create an End of School Year Art Portfolio. And I have to tell you, I absolutely love doing it this way.
Artkive makes everything super simple
When you use Artkive to make a book of your child’s artwork, they handle all the heavy lifting. They send you the box with a shipping label (and it is truly an enormous box!). Then, you pack the box and send it back.
They photograph everything in the order it is received, so you can choose to organize it before you send it. Otherwise, you can also rearrange it once you get the proof of your book. If you don’t have time to organize it before you send it, you can do it then.
They accept all types of artwork. For the most part, if it fits in the box, it can go! (Though there are a few exclusions for safety.) We put that to the test by submitting 3-D artworks, sewn artworks, and artworks painted on canvas. We even included a PixBrix art creation! They include all the packing tips you need to make sure everything arrives safely. It all turned out great! They have clear and detailed packing instructions which really helped me feel confident in preparing some of the more fragile art we sent.
Making packing the Artkive box a family activity
Since we are using our Artkive box as a homeschool art portfolio, we turned packing the box into a family activity. It was so much fun to reminisce about our various art projects and decide which ones to include. We mostly tried to pick projects from the last year, but since this was our first Artkive book, we chose to include some of our all time favorite art projects.
Having input from the kids on which art projects they wanted to include really helped me to understand what art they are the most proud of. I feel like it gave me deeper insight into what was important to them. Sometimes projects I really loved which I thought were their favorites turned out not to be the ones they reached for. Some artwork I had thought they would never think about again turned out to be the pieces they went searching for to include. It really helped me to see the art through their eyes.
Artkive allows you to combine multiple kids in one book. We decided to choose that option for our first book. We followed Artkive’s packing tips for multiple kids so we would have minimal need to rearrange it. We opted to put a caption on each page with the child’s name. However, you can use the caption area for anything.
Something fun I stumbled upon while looking through all the packing tips is that Artkive even has a packing playlist! I watched a movie while I packed ours, but I’m listening to the playlist while I write this post.
Different ways to use your Artkive book
Like I mentioned above, we’re using ours as an end of school year art portfolio. It’s been an awesome way to let the best art we did this year really shine. Now forever we’ll have a copy of the art they did this year in one neat volume that fits easily on the shelf. They also include a free Artist’s Bio Page. It’s a great option to use that page to write about what you’ve been studying in art that year and what you’ve learned.
Your Artkive box has an extended period of time during which is needs to be returned. You have 6 months – though it can be extended with a deposit towards your book. This means you could request a box near the beginning of the school year and every time your child finishes art that you’d like to have preserved, put it in the box. It would then be ordered by date (though you’d have to rearrange to put the bottom on the top if you want it from oldest to newest) and would be ready to be shipped out at the end of your school year.
One other thing that has us really excited about our Artkive box is our ability to easily share the artwork with friends and family. We are really looking forward to bringing it to show my grandma, who we visit every week. Artkive won’t help you remember not to leave it on your kitchen table when you head out the door though – ask me how I know. 😂
Artkive delivers a premium experience
Artkive has professional photographers to photograph your child’s artwork. You can really tell from the photographs that they put a lot of thought and care into making it look its best. If it is 3D, they carefully consider what angle to photograph it from to help it look its best. I appreciate that it’s a real human handling all the artwork and treating it with care, making it look its absolute best.
Now I will say there is one kind of artwork I felt like didn’t turn out the best, so I do want to let you all know about that because I think it can be prevented with a couple of simple tweaks. The one artwork that could have turned out better was drawings in all pencil. Sometimes drawings with just regular pencils turned out light. I don’t think this is Artkive’s fault at all; it’s just the nature of the artwork. The photographs in the book are super crisp, but they can’t add what isn’t there.
We did have some drawings in pencil that showed up well and those were the ones where more care had been made to have thicker lines. So I think if I was going to submit pencil drawings again, I would either ask my child to go over the lines again with pencil to make them darker or even go over them again with pen. That being said, none of the artworks turned out truly bad. Even the ones in pencil that are light are still perfectly visible. Just my own preference would be to have them darker, so next time I would take steps to make that happen.
Artkive is a way to recognize your child’s hard work and creativity
What I love about Artkive is the permanence of it. This art will be recorded in this book for years to come. It’s a nice size volume without being too big (at least ours is as 50 pages). So often, your child pours so much hard work into their art and then what happens to it? It might hang around for a while, but soon it is forgotten. Creating a book has made it a true keepsake that we’ll enjoy looking at and sharing with others for years to come.
Wondering what happens to the art afterwards? You can request that it be returned to you! So if you’d like to hold onto the originals forever as well, that’s definitely possible.
Artkive allows you to preserve your children’s artwork in a unique way. Try it out for yourself and use this link to get $20 off your purchase!
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