Family Craft Boutique

Genealogy, or the practice of tracing your family tree, is a great way to teach children about their ancestral roots. I started just such an ambitious project a few months ago on a rainy afternoon. My two sons had been asking questions about their family heritage with more frequency, so it seemed like a good time to fill them in. We started by naming all the relatives we could think of and sketching out a rudimentary tree.

After that, I dug out a pile of old photo albums and went to the attic to search for any old family paperwork. My sons retrieved some scrapbook paper and began to create pages for each family member. We eventually filled in each page with photos, handmade drawings and small kitsch items that could be pasted to the paper. It’s a project that might occupy many rainy days to come.

When we age, we often like to reflect on our past memories, and we also want to ensure that all our favorite memories are preserved.  Scrapbooking is one hobby that can preserve a lifetime of fun memories in one place.  Scrapbooking has existed for centuries, long before there were even photographs, but as technology has advanced, scrapbooking has become much more popular.  For those who might not know, scrapbooking involves taking pictures, papers, clothing, and other objects that bear some significance, and placing them in a book.  This often involves cutting, pasting, and more than a little bit of design.  However, the end result is a scrapbook that preserves memories of past and present and makes a wonderful conversation piece for others to look at.  The best part about scrapbooking is, anyone can do it. 

You can find all kinds of scrapbooking tools at retailers that sell arts and crafts supplies.  But the best part about scrapbooking is discovering a personal preference for compiling all the most precious memories. 

When it comes to family memories, there’s no better place to showcase your pictures, special letters and heirlooms, than in a family scrapbook. While it may seem a challenging task to organize all these items, it’s well worth the while. Imagine how fun it will be years from now, when you and your family members can discuss old times while perusing through the scrapbook. Before you get started on your project, however, you will need some basic scrapbook supplies. These basic scrapbooking supplies will be a necessity when starting on your new scrapbook:

~ Scrapbook album: Choose one that contains acid free pages, or buy acid-free, PVC-free sheet protectors and slide them into a three-ring binder. The size of your scrapbook will depend on your personal preference.
~ Adhesives: These will be used to secure everything to the album pages. Photo corners, photo tape, double-side adhesive strips, and glue sticks are a few options.
~ Scissors: Pick from the straight edge or decorative edge variety. Scissors can be used to cut your photos into decorative shapes, and to crop out any unwanted areas.
~ Journaling pens: Use acid-free permanent markers and pens for writing down important names, dates, and family memories, and for adding designs and pictures to your scrapbooks edges.

Well, I was all excited this week, as it is spring break from school and I had taken over 100 pictures of scrapbook paper to upload to the website. Then, Thursday and Friday of last week the wind blew like crazy at our house.

So, today I called the internet people and they said my satellite was not showing up. So, my loving husband climbed on the roof in the 26 degree weather and heavy wind and found that my internet hookup had blown over, ripping out part of the roof with it!

Luckily for me, although he wasn’t happy about it, he fixed it for me and I have been able to start uploading a very small taste of our scrapbook paper selection. I should have about 130 uploaded by late this evening and I plan on adding at least 100 more each day this week. Yeah!

So be sure to check out our new section to see what new papers we have uploaded!

http://www.afamilyaffaircraftboutique.com/store/WsDefault.asp?iNew=New

I will keep working hard to get all of our scrapbook supplies uploaded before the baby comes- the due date is June 7th.

Melissa

You spent a lot of time and resources to create your beautiful wedding.  The church was perfect and the reception was well attended.  Even the food got raves from your guests.  Now, your gown is in storage in your closet and you are back from a glorious honeymoon.  You are relaxing on your comfortable sofa and reviewing the proceedings of the occasion. Wow! You never really noticed the beautiful tulips in the church or the bouquet of orchids you were carrying as you walked down the aisle.  And your guests, weren’t they the most fashionably dressed lot?  Everything seems to have been just a blur then but all the details are coming back through your pictures.

Fortunately, photographers were working hard that day.  You have a lot of pictures and you decide to keep it all in a wedding scrapbook.  It is really simple.  You can buy a scrapbook kit that will contain an album, pens, punches, stickers, scissors and a collection of wedding scrapbook paper. Scrapbook paper for wedding photos comes in various designs that will coordinate with stickers and embellishments.  Choose your favorite photos and arrange them creatively on a sheet of wedding scrapbook paper.  Add a funny or sentimental note and some stickers.  Do this for all your chosen photos and you will come up with an album of memories that will be fun to review from time to time.

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Ok, so I’ll admit something that I don’t tell many people, especially since I own a store that sells scrapbook supplies.

I haven’t scrapbooked anything for my self in several years. It seems like every time I want to do something for my myself, the store, or something for some one else gets in the way. I have my husband’s Hunting Scrapbook caught up until October of this year. I had our wedding album pages decorated and done and ready for pictures for over 2 years (almost 3!) , and they have been patiently waiting to be put into the album.

So, since I am on Christmas break from teaching Kindergarten and I think that the nesting bug is starting to kick in, I decided to spend 2 days to finally unpack and organize my scrapbook room and actually get some of my own scrapbooking done!

Here are a few of the scrapbook pages I got completed from our wedding pictures.

Here are my 2 favorite scrapbook pages, which I actually decided to get some 12×12 picture frames for and hang as you go down our stairs along with our other wedding pictures.

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Here are some sites that carry the 12×12 frames:

http://www.pfile.com/prod_detail_list/Scrapbook-Frames

http://www.michaels.com/art/online/displayProductPage?productNum=fr0323

http://www.orientaltrading.com/ui/search/processRequest.do?Ntt=12×12+frame&x=0&y=0&requestURI=searchMain&Ntk=all&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial&N=0

It feels great to get some pictures done and be able to hold my work in my hands. And as always happens, once I start scrapbooking I just can’t stop. I think this will help me get my mind off of the miseries of being pregnant. I have been having all day and most of the night “morning sickness,” insomnia and at other times exhaustion. It seems I can’t find a chair in the house that is comfortable but scrapbooking has helped take my mind off of it and I can’t wait to get started on the baby’s scrapbook. I think I will do like I did with our wedding album and get a few pages done, like coming home from the hospital, etc. That way when I am so tired with the new baby all I will have to do is add the pictures.

Stay tuned for more pages as I get them completed!

Scrapbooking is a wonderful way to preserve all your family’s memories. It is certainly more time intensive, however, than throwing all your photos into a standard photo album. Still, many people consider the time and energy worth it, since the finished product is so beautiful. Additionally, scrapbooking offers people the chance to be highly artistic and creative.

But after all that precise gluing and cutting, trimming and arranging, the last thing you want is your scrapbook to deteriorate over time. Working together, acid and lignin can cause both deterioration and yellowing of your photos and your scrapbooking paper.

If you’re unfamiliar with lignin, it’s one of the components used in newspaper. If you need proof of how well lignin holds up over time, just check out old newspapers. They are extremely brittle and yellow, and that’s how your scrapbook will look if you don’t choose lignin-free options.

Make sure any item that goes into your scrapbook is clearly marked as acid-free and lignin-free. This includes any paper, glue, tape, or stickers.