So, I came to the end of my Ancestry.com subscription and since I can’t afford to continue with it just now, I came back to my original intent for doing genealogy in the first place: Memorialize it. That brought me round to scrapbooking, a whole new craft for me if you can believe that. I like the “3D” effect of a photo album with flowers and butterflies, ribbons and lace, and all those beautiful papers they offer at Hobby Lobby, my second home.
As you might know, YouTube is my go-to for learning how to do something new, something I haven’t tried before. Alas, I must have watched a million videos but all were lacking that one element that I find necessary in everything I do: Planning. What I saw were people placing gobs of embellishments on a sheet of paper, adding a single photo, and being done with that page. Seriously?
Further, the genealogy/heritage scrapbooks that appear on YouTube were either crammed full of too much info per page (and quite frankly unattractive let alone interesting); or they were fabulous “photo albums” that were gorgeous but just photos and no information.
I sat down and created an outline, such as you’d make if you were to write a book. I jotted down what I want to be included in my scrapbook, the order in which it should appear, information that would be necessary to the next generation to continue the research, and other ephemera – such as recipes in my grandmother’s handwriting, military records of grandfathers and uncles who fought in every war since the French & Indian War, etc., etc. And then I drew sketches of how I need to lay out each page.
I also found the “Honoring the Past” scrapbook kits by Karen somebody at Joann.com. There were two very important sheets of paper in those kits that I really, REALLY wanted: The family tree (four generations only) and the family group sheet. So I bought four kits, one for each grandparent. With shipping and a Honeypot discount, I paid $26 and some change. Since there weren’t enough papers in the kit to do all I wanted, I headed over to Hobby Lobby and bought some extra sheets to help.
And so, I’m hard at it, creating the first scrapbook of what appears to be many (or at least 4) with aunts and uncles, grandparents, greats-, and great-great-grandparents, and on, and on… with touchable textures and photos and information galore.