Crafts: Preserve family history in a heritage scrapbook
Preserving family history in a beautifully¬ designed album takes time and patience, but simple steps add up to a treasure well worth the effort.
May 2009
By Traci Smith, Associate Editor
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CREATING A TITLE PAGE: I placed a torn strip of striped paper on the left side of a 12x12 piece of green cardstock, then added two strips of ribbon at the top of the page. I centered a clock die cut on the ribbons, and used die cut letters in the middle of the page for a title. Flowers with brad centers, placed overlapping in the bottom corners, complete the page.
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Here are some tips to help you create a heritage scrapbook to share with your family. Be warned, though. Once your relatives see it, they’ll want one of their own – and more than likely, they’ll ask you to make it.
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Choose an album
How big do you want your scrapbook to be? I like the 12x12-inch scrapbook albums for heritage books, because the larger pages allow you to use more photos and embellishments than the 8x8-inch pages. However, the choice is yours.
Next, decide whether you want to add more page protectors to the album or just use the ones that come with it. Most 12x12 albums include 20 page protectors, which means the album will hold 40 pages. It’s important to determine this before starting, so you’ll know how many photos you’ll need for the book.
Once you know how many pages you’ll be making, figure out how many photos you’ll need. To do this, I usually average two photos per page, even though some pages will have only one photo, while others may have three or four. (My album has 20 page protectors, which holds 40 pages, so 40 pages times two photos per page means I’ll need 80 photos. To that number, I add five, just so I’ll be sure to have enough. That means I’ll need to find 85 photos.)
Find photos
Finding photos is generally the most time-consuming step in the project. I go through and pick out my favorite photos, count them to see how many more I will need, and then go back through the photos I didn’t pick and choose more. I do this until I reach the number needed. Then it’s time to make copies of them.
I have a scanner-printer and a computer, so I scan the photos onto the computer, then print them out on photo paper in various sizes – 3½x5, 4x6 and 5x7. Occasionally I’ll use an 8x10, but not very often – they take up a lot of room, which makes it difficult to add embellishments. Not everyone likes to use different size photos. Some prefer to use all 3½x5 or 4x6 photos. Others like to use both 3½x5 and 4x6 photos, but avoid any 5x7s. The choice is completely up to you.
If you don’t have a scanner-printer and a computer, you can take your photos to a photo center and have copies made.
Gather information
Information about your photos is needed to tell the story of the photos on your pages. This is where family comes into play. Ask parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings to help answer the “Who, what, when, where and why” questions about the photos you’re using. This process can take awhile, but it’s a lot of fun, and very helpful.
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