Have you been researching your family history and discovered quite a substantial amount thanks to your diligent online research and maybe even trips to the archive offices?
If you have then you might have a huge file of papers, documents, photos and other bits and pieces. So, what do you do with all of it? How do you organize it?
Well, how about being creative and making a beautiful, one of a kind, genealogy scrapbook that will not only protect these precious documents, but also display them in a stunning way for your entire family to marvel at.
Your genealogy scrapbook will definitely take center stage at all the family reunions!
Getting Started With Genealogy Scrapbooking
There are a number of excellent pre-made genealogy scrapbook pages that you can collect and combine to make a simple task of the scrapbook.
To get started you should make sure you get an ancestral history tree that you can fill in and stick photographs onto, as well as pages that offer spaces for writing short snippets of information about individuals in your family ancestry.
When you are looking for scrapbooks and scrapbook pages, make sure that you get plastic pockets that store the photographs to prevent them from getting ruined, especially the older photos.
You might also want to consider a pre-made Genealogy Scrapbook kit which brings together all the elements that you need in one complete kit.
Different Genealogy Scrapbook Designs
When you go about deciding on the design of the genealogy scrapbooks, you will be spoilt for choice.
You can either go for the old style, vintage look with browned pages and script font that will look amazing with old black and white photos, or you could pick something more fun and colorful that fits in better with your families personality.
You can go for pastels, bright primary colors, or stick to a theme such as nature. Take a look at some of the amazing Genealogy Scrapbooking materials that are available.
Your Scrapbook Layout and Choosing Documents
One of the most exciting things about designing your genealogy scrapbook is deciding what goes where.
The layout is important for displaying your family history correctly. You should choose documents that really bring the nostalgia of the times as well as the interesting facts about each person. You can lay out the nearest relatives to you on single pages, and then as you go back in time, you can link spouses on a page.
This will obviously all depend on your research and what you have managed to uncover. For instance, if you find that you have a military hero or someone important in your family’s history, you can highlight them in the family history by giving them a special page of their own, where you can include certificates, medals, newspaper clippings and more.
One of the other decisions regarding the layout that you will have to make, will be the order that the genealogy scrapbook is in. If you start off with a double spread of the ancestral history, you can then follow on in order from the last relative on the list to the newest.
You could also create a more interesting scrapbook that allows you to block off sections for specific family sections. So, for instance, you could take a set of great great grandparents and organize that side of the family into a section of the book, and then do the same for the other side.
Scrapbooking Your Family History
Most Popular Genealogy Scrapbooking Book
There are some other great additions that you can add to your genealogy scrapbook that will make it more interesting. This includes a history about your family name, information about your family’s coat of arms, perhaps some history behind an immigration that was pertinent to your family, or some world event that a member of your family was involved in, such as their part in one of the World Wars.
All in all, when you want to create a beautiful piece of art that also offers you a way to preserve your genealogy research, and display it for your family’s posterity, making your own genealogy scrapbook is an excellent idea!
Take a look at the book below which will give you so much inspiration on how to create a really wonderful Family History/Genealogy Scrapbook.