Easy DIY Children’s Artwork Stationery

Here is an idea for those of you with little ones.  I love to see all the adorable artwork they create and it is often hard to keep it all and to treasure it for what it is… a glimpse into their little worlds.  (My littlest is still in the big circle head and two stick legs stage which always makes me smile and my big girl colors a lot of I Love Mommy and rainbows and flowers…)

So after an especially sad afternoon when the girls caught me tossing out some of their artwork- oh the hurt little expressions on their faces (major #momfail) I decided to surprise them with custom art stickers.  I have seen photo stickers advertised from Costco photo and I was thinking that artwork would be just as cute.

These are crazy easy to do and add a really fun touch to letters or cards- I made a batch for holiday cards and another batch for the girls to put on thank you notes.  They are fairly cheap as well and just take a few minutes.

1. Collect the masterpiece you want to use.  I asked my 6 year to make a Christmas picture for our holiday cards and here is what she designed.  I was kind of hoping for a colorful Christmas Tree but this was her artistic vision.  As you can see below these turn out a little better with lighter colors but hey- who am I to judge artistic vision.

I like to have the kiddo sign the photo too and write their age or the year.  Make sure this isn’t in a corner just in case your image needs to be cropped.

2. Find a well lit area of your home (kitchen counter, in front of a glass door etc… during the day when sunshine is coming through.)  I live in California where we get harsh light so my photos were taken outside right on the porch where it is light but there is shade from the sun.

3. Take a photo of the artwork.  That is actually my photo straight from the camera on the front porch during the day.

4.  Next you want to save your photo to Costco.com or to Walmart.com.  I used Costco for mine and you need to save the image as a jpg (I think it is) and then under photo, stationery- you will see an option for photo stickers. I clicked on that and then you can either have a border added or I selected “Studio” and “Full Photo”.  That gives you a plain sticker with just your photo on it.

5. Next insert your child’s artwork as the photo and you are done!   The price from Costco was $2.99 for a sheet of 20 stickers.  You can order to pick up in store or it was something like $.80 to have them shipped.  Mine came in roughly 3 business days (I think I ordered on a Thursday and they arrived by Tuesday).

If you don’t have a Costco, Walmart does something similar but the prices are higher at $4.41 per sheet.  (Head over here and scroll down to almost the bottom and you will see the offer for these). 

And here is what my final product looked like:

And filling out our holiday cards, I think this adds a really sweet touch:

We have another batch ready for thank you notes after Christmas-

If the stickers aren’t your thing there are other options like notepads, post its, mugs etc…    I was really happy with these and I think it does a lot for a child’s self esteem to see the projects they create elevated to something really special.

And please stay tuned for the next few weeks when I have some other ideas coming for preserving children’s artwork (without piles of clutter. )

See more fun ideas for children’s crafts and activities from my Pinterest board here.