Today’s Hint: Turn Kids’ Drawings into Easy DIY Thank You Notes

My daughter only just turned 2, but we’re already amassing a collection of her scribbles. In addition to the masterpieces she makes at her weekly toddler art class, she has a sketchpad full of her at-home drawings.

While I certainly plan to save a few of her creations for posterity, I’ve been brainstorming what to do with the rest, besides the most obvious option of simply trashing them.

Well, inspiration struck as I was writing thank you notes for my daughter’s second birthday gifts, and I hit on the strategy that is today’s hint: Turn kids’ drawings into thank you notes.

Here’s what I did: I took some of the drawn-on pages out of my daughter’s Melissa & Doug sketch pad, cut them up into thank-you-note-sized pieces and then folded the pieces into homemade cards. On the front of each card, designated as the side with the most colorful and elaborate scribbles, I wrote “Thank You” with a purple marker. Inside each card, I wrote a thank you message from my daughter. You can see the original drawings in the image below and the final product in the image above.

I hit on this approach after I ran out of my daughter’s special stationary bearing her name as well as my own pretty thank you cards (in which I had my daughter scribble a bit).

It also came to me after I found having my daughter draw new pictures on blank white paper strips I had cut was turning out to be a laborious and slow process (though it was a good toddler-activity that kept my daughter occupied for a good 10 minutes or so at a time). I realized I would be able to check the thank you card project off my to-do list a lot quicker if I simply created cards out of already-made scribbles.

To be sure, some may view children’s art as too sacrosanct to cut up, but I don’t fall into that camp, and I’m not the first person to come up with this idea. I found similar advice over at Imagination Tree, TinkerLab and The Art of Simple. And of course, there are more elaborate ways to turn kids’ artwork into greeting cards than my simple scissor and marker technique.

As blog Mimosa Lane points out, you can use Moo.com to create pretty card sets. Other sites offering similar services include Shutterfly, Snapfish and Print Art Kids. Though such options, while very pretty, aren’t as budget-friendly as my DIY cards.

Finally, I recognize that my approach may seem a little less personal to some than if my daughter had crafted new personal scribbles on each of her thank you cards. But since I did the project with my tot in tow and she did scribble on many of her cards (see the image to the right), I figure it’s the thought that counts.

What do you do with the pieces of kid art that you don’t plan on saving for the long term?

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