From Trash to Treasure: How to Scan, Share, and Save Your Kids’ Art

By Aura | April 19, 2022

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a three-headed dragon having a tea party with SpongeBob and My Little Pony!

Kid art is vibrant, it’s one-of-a-kind, and it often interprets familiar subjects in, ahem, avant-garde ways. But after years of school art classes and weekend doodling sessions, it begins to pile up, disrupting the color scheme, feng-shui “chi” flow, and sense of peace in our homes. Still, guilt, or sentimentality, or the pressure to do what Supermom is “supposed” to do can keep us clinging to coloring-book pages.

Having to get past the gigantic Crayola spider on your refrigerator door every time you reach for the ketchup is enough to put you off condiments for good, but you can free your fridge. Aura’s digital picture frames and brand-new, in-app scanner help encourage your kids to unleash their creativity without unleashing mountains of mess into your life.

Discard and declutter

We may think the easiest solution is to banish our kid’s artwork to the depths of the basement. Storage bins may sweep kid art out of sight, but they also allow it to continue taking up space in our homes and our lives as clutter that lies untouched, unseen, and unremembered. It’s best to discard kid art before it piles up and becomes even more of a big deal to deal with. (Some mediums, such as origami, watercolor, and colored-pencil and marker doodles can even be recycled.)

An Aura digital photo frame lets you let go of your kid’s creative clutter and your guilt. Even when kid art is trashed, it can still be treasured — and even treated like a masterpiece.

Digitize and share

Modern technology allows us to see masterpieces like the “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and “The Birth of Venus” in a few easy clicks, without paying the airfare to The Hague or Florence. Aura’s in-app scanner does the same by allowing you to shift your kid art from piles of paper into the digital realm.

Whether your kid’s art is a surrealist landscape in the style of Dalí, an abstract portrait that would make Picasso envious, or a work best suited for the the museum in the trash can, you can show it off to an audience of “art critics” — or family members who will find it charming — through the Aura app. Aura’s in-app scanner makes it easy to preserve original art, printed photos, and unlimited memories, and to share them with loved ones, all in one place.

The Aura app also simplifies transferring your photos from phone to frame, so houseguests and faraway friends alike can take a step back, furrow their brows, and contemplate the beauty and genius of your child’s depiction of Scooby-Doo.

Frame, showcase, and preserve

In an art museum, presentation is everything. Mona Lisa would look incomplete without her golden frame — so give your kids’ art the Mona Lisa treatment by showcasing it in a stunning Aura frame that lets it shine.

If your child catches on to your sly decluttering, asks where a certain piece of art disappeared to, or even finds one of their creations hanging out in the trash, you can avoid the guilt by showing them their work — digitized, framed, preserved, and showcased — in an Aura smart picture frame. You can even create an opportunity to bond by inviting your kids to play co-curator when choosing which of their works to put on display.

Museums often undertake elaborate restoration and preservation efforts to maintain a work of art. By digitizing your kid art with the Aura app, you can eliminate the fading, yellowing, and general wear and tear that could warp it with time on display or in storage. By preserving it in its original condition in an Aura frame, it can remain a masterpiece — or, at least, a piece of your child’s creative journey — for years to come.