Scrapbooking Your Family

Little bits of paper, faded photos, concert programs and tickets evoke memories from our past.  Perhaps you have created a scrapbook of your children or yourself from childhood.  The visual story provides you with reminders of your past and opens a door for others to get to know you.  Scrapbooks become another way for us to tell our ancestor stories.  For those who find the thought of writing a book overwhelming, a scrapbook might be the answer.
We’ll look at some ideas and resources to help you create your ancestor’s scrapbook and tell their story

Here are points to keep in mind as you venture down the path of creating a memory or scrapbook.
Planning

• Think about the purpose of your scrapbook.  Who do you want to include?  What level of detail?  Where do you want to start?  Will you start with the oldest relatives and move to present day?  Or work back from today?  Will your book include only your direct line or siblings of your ancestors? How many generations will you include?

Products

• Products include your sundries and genealogy materials plus the scrapbook and papers you intend to use.
• Take the opportunity to gather and sort the information you have on your ancestor. You can take photos of items that are 3-dimensional and include them.  Make copies of original photos and documents and have fun decorating with archival safe paper and decorations on your scrapbook pages.
•  If the thought of decorating pages and traditional scrapbooking makes your stomach hurt, there are other options.  Thankfully there are now photo albums with archival safe sheets.  You simply slide your photo into the slots and you are almost done.  Use archival safe paper for one of the slots to identify the pictures and share their stories.  This method might be the way to go if you have many photos and limited time.
• Another option is to upload your photos to an online service that specializes in photobooks.  You can still include stories along with the pictures.  This option does require some planning—especially if you are uploading many photos.  I have used this option to celebrate my Dad’s retirement.

Personal

• A great scrapbook includes not only the pictures and decorative pages but also words.  Pretend that your reader doesn’t know your family at all…set the stage and tell them a little about them such as where they came from, how they got here, and share a story about them.  For example, you ancestor might have played an instrument at home parties or was known for raising beautiful horses or had the best jam at the county fair.  These small snippets give us a glimpse into the person staring back from the photography.  Their lives are the times spent between their birth and death dates.

Prose

• Don’t get hung up on the writing.  It is much more important to share the information and stories.  And if you write the story in long hand, that too will become a connection to your descendants. I still love to see my grandmother’s handwriting on an old card.  It is an instant connection for me—even though she passed many years ago.

Protect

• As archivists for the family, your cardinal rule should be to “do no harm” to original items.  This means placing them in an archival sleeve, using acid free paper and non-permanent adhesive, and making copies of originals. Store the originals in archive appropriate containers in a safe place. Remember that these items may have lasted over 100 years, we don’t want to accidentally damage them. 

Here are some personal tips that I’ve found useful as my scrapbooks have grown.  Use a scrapbook that allows you to rearrange and reorder the pages.  As you acquire more pictures or documents, you will inevitably find yourself adding more pages. I like to add my pictures and scrapbooking to paper that fits the scrapbook page rather than attaching them directly to the scrapbook page.
 
I have found it helpful to have four scrapbooks—one for each of my family lines.  I didn’t start out this way but as my research expanded beyond my direct ancestors and I acquired more information on their siblings, I wanted to include additional pages.  One album became cumbersome.  You can also choose background colored paper that reflects a specific family line or generation or even locations.  This helps your reader understand how people fit into the mix and adds interest.
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Resources

• Creative Memories
• Creative Memories carries archival safe photobooks and pages for scrapbooking.  There are other similar companies.  This is the one that I’ve used for many years and their products have stood up and remain my favorite for scrapbooking ancestors.
• Snapfish
• Shutterfly
• Both Snapfish and Shutterfly have similar options for creating photobooks online and you can reorder books if you decide to give to family members.  There are often specials throughout the year but keep in mind that that prices do go up as you go beyond the standard number of pages.  Again, there are likely others out there but I’m most familiar with these.
• Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive by Allison Gilbert, publisher Seal Press (April 12, 2016) I like this book which provides ideas to keep the memories of loved ones alive for people with recent losses.  Afterall as genealogists that’s what we are doing…keeping our ancestors alive through words and pictures. The author has provided some interesting ideas to pursue.   However, keep your archival hat on as you read as some suggestions are reversible. For example, you would not want to laminate original documents or put Grandpa’s cuff links into a resin solution.
• Living Legacies: How to Write, Illustrate, and Share Your Life Stories by Duane Elgin and Coleen Ledrew, Published by Conari Press (January 11, 2001) ‘A first-time writer's illustrated guide to the process of writing stories and decorating them with photographs and memorabilia also offers a list of questions to draw out events and memories, magic moments, and simple pleasures.’
• How to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn How to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia and Genealogy Records by Denise May Levenick, Publisher Family Tree Books (September 13, 2012) This is an excellent book and has information regarding scrapbooking and preserving existing scrapbooks for the family historian.  In addition, it offers excellent tips on sorting, archiving and organizing all those things we acquire as genealogists and sometime reluctant family curators.

You can find more resources about scrapbooking in general by doing a Google or Bing search.  And remember there are other resources such a how to videos and Pinterest.  Have fun exploring and getting those creative juices flowing.

Scrapbooking is a fun and creative way to display your ancestors’ pictures and stories.  You can be as elaborate and creative as you like when it comes to page decoration.  Or, keep it simple and focus on telling the story in an easy to understand way.  And don’t forget yourself and current generations!  There are opportunities to share from the present to the past when it comes to scrapbooking your family.
 
“Just as pieces stitched together in a quilt warm our bodies, scrapbooks bind together memories to warm our hearts” – author unknown