How to Organize a Family Heritage Scrapbook

You have hundreds of photos from your parents and grandparents, and you want to make a scrapbook to record your family heritage. But where do you begin? Seeing all those pictures can be overwhelming unless you have an organization system. Making the scrapbook can take years unless you have a plan. I made my own family scrapbook and had a great time doing it, finishing the book in less than a year.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• photos
• scrapbook album
• acid-free cardstock
• acid-free stickers
• acid-free markers
• acid-free adhesive
• scissors

1. Organize the photos in some manner. They do not have to be sequential. As a matter of fact, sequential is probably the hardest way to do it. Spread your pictures on a large table. Do you see some that can be grouped together such as family pictures, vacations, holidays, school days, or babies? When I did my family's book, I started with my grandparents. Then I took my grandma's brothers and sisters and made a page for each of them. I did the same for my grandpa's. Then I scrapbooked about their life together before they had children. Then I made pages about each of my grandparents' children and kids. Finally, I included holiday celebrations at the end of the book. This system worked for me.

2. Once you have your organization system, group your photos together, put them in envelopes, and label each envelope with the category such as Grandpa's brothers or Mom and Dad's Wedding.

3. Look through your stickers. Do you have stickers that will match with your categories? Put these matching stickers in each envelope.

4. Decide on a color scheme. I used a lot of browns, tans, olive greens, and beiges in my album. But I also used some blue and red. I had a pattern to my pages such as all Grandma's siblings had green pages and all Grandpa's side of the family was on checked paper.

5. Position your photos on the page, cut any that you need to, add some stickers, and then journal or add photo captions.

6. Work on your scrapbook in a consistent manner, and you will get finished. Then be proud to share your family's album at your next gathering.

Tips & Warnings

• Include family stories either on the pages with pictures or as a special typed section in the back of the scrapbook.
• Acid-free double-sided tape works well as an adhesive for scrapbook pages.

Resources

• Margo Dill's Web site

[gahazeleyes]

on 5/30/2009 Thank you. This is great!!

[acole]

on 5/23/2008 Scrapbooks are fun. Good article. Thanks!