Including the Art

As a mom I am really bad about keeping all of the little "treasures" that my daughters make me. I do have a box that the girls know to put all of their school stuff in that fills their backpacks and twice a school year I go through it and pick out a selection of artwork and schoolwork that is a good representation of what and how they are doing in school. I then put that stuff into a file folder labeled with the grade in my filing cabinet. At the end of the year I go back through the folder and see if I can take anything out. I would love to start incorporating more of that stuff into the girls' albums but baby steps!

I have recently kept a small box in my scraproom that is for all of the little notes and cards and drawings that the girls make me, and I finally had a chance to sit down and scrap some of the ones from Madison.
I used the SEI Corrine line and I really love the cheeriness of it. I used a slightly older random picture of Madison that I had in my box that just didn't have a place so it was perfect for this. And I think that the crocheted hat adds to the artist flair!
Madison will write me an "I'm sorry" note when she gets in trouble. I love this sweet side of her that is crushed when she knows that she has disappointed us. I have saved this one in particular and that little square drawing is so cute. At her old school, her teacher asked the class to draw a picture representing their favorite day of the week. Madison drew a picture of herself playing football because Sundays are football days (at least for the good part of the year!) We are big Cowboys fans here so football days are very important!
I used this super cute trim at the bottom of the page to give it some color and texture. The top of the journaling I made with an EK Success border punch that looks like notebook paper ripped out.
Here is the inside of the anniversary card that she made us last year. It is so cute and detailed!
This is the cool part about the We R Memory Keepers 3 ring albums. I was able to take a regular 8 1/2 x 11 page protector and place some of Madison's larger artwork right into her album next to the page that I did. I don't need a second album and I didn't have to find a way to incorporate these larger pieces into a 12x12 page! Here is the other side...
This is the flag that Madison created for the kids' "camp-out" in the living room. The scrapbook page is right there behind it.
For right now this is Madison's album, you can find this one here although I have this one coming to me tomorrow in Strawberry to be her next album. I either order from Amazon and use my swagbucks or I order from Ritz Camera.com these are the two best places to get these albums at great prices.

I am hoping to create several more layouts to fit into this album and maybe even be able to fit up to this next birthday but I'm not quite sure yet so I already have the back up album for her in the brighter color. They didn't have that Strawberry a couple of years ago when I bought this pink.
Each album comes with 10 regular 12x12 page protectors in it and one of these divided 4x6 ones. I am planning to put any extra photos of her that didn't get scrapped into these pockets so that they are all together. At the bottom right there you can see that they also have a variety of configurations of divided protectors. I bought the assortment pack but haven't really played with them yet, I will be this summer though!

Thanks for looking at my daughter's album and hopefully it has inspired you to keep and use some of your kids' artwork in your albums!