How to Turn Your Kid's Art Into a Book

If you've got kids' drawings stuck to the refrigerator, a plastic bin that’s overflowing, or a corner of the closet you're avoiding, you're not alone. Turning your kid's art into a book is one of the most popular ways families solve the "too much artwork, not enough space" problem, and there's more than one way to do it. You can scan and design a book yourself, use a photo book app, or send everything to a service like Artkive and let someone else handle the sorting, scanning, and design. Here's how each option actually works, so you can pick the one that fits your family.

Why Parents Look for a Way to Turn Kids' Art Into a Book

Anyone with a school-aged kid knows the feeling. The art keeps coming home faster than you can display it, and every piece feels a little too special to toss straight in the recycling. A book solves that guilt in a real way. Instead of a drawer nobody opens, you get something you'll actually pull off the shelf on a rainy afternoon, hand to grandma, or read together when your kid is all grown up.

It's also just a better way to see the work. A pile of loose paper hides how much your kid has grown, but flipping through a year of art in book form and the progress jumps off the page, the wobbly first stick figures next to the confident dinosaur drawings six months later.

Method 1: DIY, Scan and Print It Yourself

If you've got the time and enjoy the process, doing it yourself gives you the most control. Here's what it looks like:

Scan or photograph everything. A flatbed scanner gives the cleanest results, especially for anything with texture, but a smartphone camera in good natural light works fine too. Lay each piece flat, avoid shadows, and try to capture it straight on rather than at an angle.

Get organized before you upload. Create folders by child, by year, or by school grade, whatever will make sense to you later. This step feels tedious in the moment and saves you hours when you're actually designing.

Choose a print-on-demand photo book platform. Most photo book services let you upload images and drop them into a template. Look for one that supports simple, minimal layouts, kids' art tends to look best with lots of white space around it rather than busy borders or filters.

Design page by page. Budget more time than you think. Sorting a year's worth of art, choosing favorites, and laying out even a modest book can easily take a full weekend, sometimes longer if you're working through several years at once.

The upside is total creative control and, often, a lower cost. The downside is honest: it's a real project, not a quick task, and it's easy to start with enthusiasm and lose momentum halfway through a shoebox of drawings.

Method 2: Consumer Photo Book Apps

This sits in the middle. Most general photo book apps aren't built specifically for kids' art, but they work well enough if you're willing to do your own scanning and sorting first. You get more polished templates and easier design tools than a fully DIY approach, fonts, layouts, and backgrounds are already built in, so you're arranging rather than building from scratch.

The tradeoff is that you're still doing all the labor of preparing the artwork. The app can make the book look nice, but it can't sort through your kid's backpack for you, and it won't know which crumpled masterpiece from October is the one worth saving.

Method 3: Concierge Art-to-Book Services (Like Artkive)

This is the option for families who want the end result of a beautiful book without doing the scanning, sorting, and design themselves. With Artkive, you order a box, fill it with your kid's actual artwork (not photos of it, the real pieces), and send it back. From there, every piece is professionally photographed and edited, and a design team lays out the book for you. You get a digital proof to review, make any changes you want, approve it, and it goes to print.

Artkive isn't the only service that does this, but a few things make the process genuinely low-effort: you're never uploading files or wrestling with templates, there's no minimum number of pieces to worry about (books range from 25 to 350 images), and you get digital copies of everything alongside the printed book, so nothing exists in just one place.

If you've got years of artwork piling up and realistically won't get to a DIY project anytime soon, this is the path that actually gets it done.

What to Do With the Original Artwork Afterwards

Once your kid's art is safely preserved in a book, most families either recycle them or keep the originals. If you'd like your art back after the book is made, that's an option too. Some services, including Artkive, allow you to have your original artwork returned after your book is complete.

If there are one or two favorites you'd love to see every day outside of the printed book, displaying a few favorites at home is a nice way to keep the best of the best out where you'll actually see it.

How Many Pieces of Art Do You Need for a Book?

This depends on the method. If you're doing it yourself through a photo book app, most platforms have a low minimum, often as few as 10 to 20 pages, so you can start small.

With Artkive, books range from 25 images up to 350 images in a single book, with each page featuring one piece of art. Pricing starts at $75 for a 25-piece book, and the Artkive Box itself is built to hold 300 to 400 pieces of art, so however much you've been saving, there's room for it.

Choosing the Right Method for Your Family

There's no single right answer here, it really comes down to time, budget, and how much art you're working with.

If you've got a small, manageable collection and enjoy a creative project, DIY or a photo book app will get you there, and you'll save some money along the way. If you've got years of accumulated artwork, multiple kids, or simply don't have a free weekend (or several) to dedicate to scanning and designing, a concierge service does the heavy lifting for you.

Either way, the best method is the one that actually gets finished. A half-done photo book saved in a browser tab helps no one.

Kids Art Books FAQs

Do I need to scan every piece of my kid's artwork myself? Not if you use a concierge service. DIY and photo book apps require you to photograph or scan each piece yourself; services like Artkive handle scanning and digitizing for you once you send the physical pieces in.

How long does it take to turn kids' art into a book? DIY projects can take anywhere from a weekend to several weeks, depending on how much art you're working through. With a concierge service like Artkive, the full process from mailing in your artwork to receiving your finished book typically takes 3 to 8 weeks, depending on the season.

What happens to the artwork after it's turned into a book? Most families recycle or donate the originals once the art is preserved in book form. You can also choose to have your original artwork returned to you after the book is complete.

Can I include things other than drawings and paintings? Yes. Most kids' art books can include school projects, worksheets, handmade cards, clay pieces, and other keepsakes alongside traditional drawings and paintings.

Ready to turn your child's art into a beautiful keepsake book without lifting a scanner? See how Artkive Art Books work.