Things are always changing in our home. I probably rearrange something, switch a picture out of a frame, move an accent from here to there, paint something … every week. Sometimes daily. It’s my little creative outlet I guess.

This is the latest change to our play room. Found this awesome clock at WalMart, of all places. Already had everything else – the frames and stands, the painted wooden animals (from World Market) and bookcase (from Razmataz). And I left Porter’s handwritten alphabet in the smaller frame from when he was almost 5 years old.

The dinosaur art is new. Porter loves to draw. It’s never the same thing. It’s whatever he sees or feels like that day. Recently it was dinosaurs. One dinosaur per sheet of paper.

I love putting the kids’ art in frames or hanging it on the walls or using it as our desktop wallpaper. Not only because I’m their mother and therefore a total sucker for everything they write and draw … but displaying their art nurtures their creativity and boosts their ego. If you missed my post about Nurturing Creativity in Our Children, you can find that here.

So back to the dinosaur art. This is what I did:

1. I scanned each page (at least 300 dpi).

2. I opened up each file in Photoshop and cropped each piece of art so that each dinosaur (with a little space around it) was 4″ x 3″. I knew the size of my frame and just figured it out so I would have 9 sections for the 9 dinosaurs.

3. In Photoshop, I created a canvas size (fit for my frame) and one by one, I dropped each 4″ x 3″ image onto the canvas.

4. I added a bit of text at the bottom. (Mom taught me to sign and date everything.)

5. I saved the document as a .psd (so all the layers are still there and in case I ever want to make changes) and as a .jpg. The jpg file is what compresses all of the layers and you can upload that to be printed.

Oh, the possibilities! Perhaps this is something you could put to good use with your favorite art that came home from school this year? Maybe you have been hanging on to the art from your own school years. Wouldn’t that be cool to create a grid of your own masterpieces?

Now that the file is created – this collection of dinosaurs – it’s super easy to print 4×6 copies of this and send postcards to friends and cousins. That’s next on the list of summer activities.