Heritage Album Class
Scrappin' and Stampin'
Karen Chichester

Where to Start

Before you begin you need to do the following:

1.  Decide Who will be Reading This Album? 
This will determine the overall "slant" of this album.

2.  Gather Your Old Photos And Any Other Memorabilia. 
Do not limit your album to photos. Anything and everything else you include adds to the "story" that your album tells. This may also include researching your history and/or interviewing relatives.

3.  Gather Archival Quality Material for Mounting and Preserving Your History.
Make sure that you use only archival paper, adhesives, embellishments, mounting corners or photo corners, and albums. All writing and ink decoration should be done in acid free and permanent ink. Pigment is best. Photo Sleeves are a must!

4.  Decide the Overall Organization of the Album. 
Will your album have one or both sides of the family in it? Will it begin with you or with your oldest relative? Will you include a family tree?

5.  Sort and Organize Your Memorabilia According to Your Plan

6.  Decide on a Color Theme. This is optional, but it may make your organization clearer.
 

Who will be Reading This Album?

If the album is for one person, you can:

¨ Refer to the recipient in your journalizing.  i.e. "This is your Great Grand Mother Jones."

¨ Begin the album with a full size photo of the person the album is for. Include their date and place of birth.

¨ If the album is for a 50th anniversary or a special birthday, you can include notes of remembrance, and congratulations too.

If the album is for future generations, you should:

¨ Be sure to write down the names, parents names, dates of birth, death, & marriage on the first page which someone appears in your album.  Family trees are a good place to record this important
information.

¨ On photos where someone has written an explanation on the back of the photo, photocopy the back and put it on the page next to the photo. That way, you not only have the photo and the story, but you have preserved the original handwriting of 'Grandma Smith' or 'Great Aunt Betty'.

¨ If you have a large group photo, you can identify everyone by photocopying each photo, putting a dab of white-out on each person, letting it dry, and then numbering each individual. Mount this underneath the photo. Or, if it is a really large photo put it on the next page and make a list which identifies each person by number. This makes it easier to identify who that person in the center of the photo is without counting rows and counting how many people from the left, etc.
 

Gather Your Old Photos And Any Other Memorabilia

¨ Photographs, Tintypes, Postcards

¨ Copies of Newspaper Articles

¨ Wedding Invitations, Birth Certificates, Marriage Certificates, Titles/Deeds to Property, and Other Documents

¨ Letters to and from the people in your album

¨ Consider interviewing family members and friends.

¨ After interviewing family members, consider visiting some of the places that are important to your story and look up the sites that had special meaning for importance to your family --places they lived, schools they attended, churches they attended, etc. Also include a map with all of those sites marked.

¨ Visit the library and find newspapers on microfilm/fiche/database.  You could copy the front pages of newspapers with important dates and make copies of ads showing products and prices of that day for things like food, clothing, household items, and cars.
 

Genealogical Research

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

¨ Consult your local genealogical society for information on how to proceed.

¨ Do a web search for information. There are numerous genealogical web sites.  The most reputable on the world wide web is currently "Cyndi's List":  http://www.cyndislist.com

¨ Buy, download, or borrow  Family Tree Maker software  (http:// www.familytreemaker.com)
Registered owners get web page space and can post their entire genealogy, or just part of it, with links to their other web pages. Registered owners are also listed on many search engines, so that distant and not-so-distant relatives can find them.

¨ Include a family tree. Draw your own or use a preprinted Family Tree page. There are some cute ones here at Scrappin' and Stampin', and Creative Memories has a new one.  You can also contact Everton, a leading genealogy vender. Everton sells Pedigree Charts, Family Group Sheets, and other acid free papers.

¨ Put a genealogical chart at the front of the book and use the numbering system on the genealogical chart as an index. (Genealogists have a very systematic way of doing this. If you want to do it correctly, consult the local genealogical society.)

¨ However, if you are not that picky, you could just assign each person a number. 
*Example* On a chart for Sue's family, Sue is # 1, her father # 2, her paternal grandfather #4, and so on. (Sue adds an initial so you can tell whose ancestor is whose.)  So in Sue's album, her father's page would be numbered # 2 S (for Sue), her husband's father #2 N (for Nick, her husband's first name), and so on.
 

Archival Quality Material for Preserving Your History (Rewritten 4/19/99)

¨Use pH Neutral paper, inks and adhesives.  The pH scale ranges from 1.0 to 10.0 with 7.0 as neutral.  A pH level below 7.0 is acidic.  A pH above 7.0 is alkaline.  Just remember that the farther away from 7.0 a pH level is, the greater the Acidity/Alkalinity. The numbers go up and down in a geometric progression (a pH level of 6.5 is 10 times more acidic that a pH level of  6.6).

Nothing is truly acid free. Most products are virtually acid free. This means they have a pH level
close to 7.0. At the present time there is no standard for what the term "acid free" means. (Just like
"low fat".) Companies are allowed to claim this as long as their papers are close to 7.0.

Also, too much alkaline is just as harmful. The alkaline is added to "buffer" some paper.  This buffering helps keep the acid from memorabilia and photos from migrating onto other items on the page.  Be aware that buffering can cause a slight color shift in color photographs over a number of years. This shift is slight, but avoid placing buffered paper directly on the emulsion side of your photographs.

¨ Truly Lignin free paper is the best. However, that paper is only sold by companies that supply museums and is very costly (dollar or more per sheet). There is no test for lignin. Companies are
allowed to say their paper is lignin free if a certain chemical was added during the paper making process to neutralize the lignin.

¨ Try to stay with one and no more than two types of adhesives on each page. Even if all products are "acid free", or "photo-safe", the combination of a number of other chemicals can cause undesirable
effects.

¨ If you are really concerned about the longevity of the photos in your heritage album, do not use the originals. Have copies of the original photographs produced with a good color copier, and use the color copies. Have Black and White photos copied on the color copier with it set in black and white mode.

¨ Have newspaper articles copied onto 100% cotton paper. Cotton paper does not contain lignin.

¨ Encase other memorabilia in photo sleeves.

¨ Use page protectors.

¨ Two ways to mount very special pictures:

     - When mounting directly on the page, use corner mounts, or photo corners

     - When mounting photos on colored paper, cut a diagonal slice in the corner of the paper 
        and slide the pictures in like you would with corner mounts or photo corners.  This also 
        works great with corner slot-punches.
 

Overall Organization of the Album

One family or two?  What do I do?  Here are a few ideas:

¨ Mount all of the pictures from one side of the family using one color scheme. Choose a complementary color scheme for the other side of  the family. Combine the two color schemes for the children. 

¨ Start with "farthest back" ancestor and work your way forward on one or both sides of the family. End with you.

¨ Have a genealogical chart at the front of your book, and use the numbering system from it as an index. Each person should have their genealogical number on their page so you can look at the chart and see where they are on the family tree.

¨ Begin with a family tree. Then do a page for each couple, front and back. Try not to do a 2 page spread, unless it is the center of 2 full front and back pages.  This way you can re-arrange the pages. If you have enough info on the husband or wife, do another page...maybe front for husband, back for
wife. Include any memorabilia that you have for the couple.

¨ Start with the recipient of your album and work backwards.
That person's photo is matted with two colors of background paper, one color for the paternal line and the other color for the maternal line.  Photos in the front of the album are matted with both colors of paper.  Then when the photos separate into maternal and paternal family lines use only the background paper related to that family line. This way as you get farther back into the album you can always tell by the color of the photo mat as to whose side of the family the photos are from.
 

Layout and Other Ideas
¨ If using Albums with scrapbook pages (as opposed to drop in page protectors), do the pages from each family line always using either 1 page front and back or 2 pages front and back, etc. so you can rearrange later. If you really want a 2 page spread, fill in with a miscellaneous page (old letters, deeds, tombstone photos, poems, etc.)

¨ Copy the back of the old photos and put that beside the photo in the album.

¨ If you nothing more than name, dates of birth, marriage, and death for a person, consider using clip art which is characteristic of events going on in that time period:  covered wagons representing western migration in the U.S., sailing ships to represent immigration from other countries, Victorian ladies in their fancy clothing, etc. Look in history books to find major events that occurred during each person's life.

¨ Do not get too "Creative" with each page. Stick to very basic layouts so you do not detract from the pictures. Use some color, but nothing too flashy.

¨ Crop minimally, if at all. Use the personal trimmer and a corner rounder.  No more than that.

¨ Black and white photographs look great with black and white paper.  Also, using the lace edge punches adds a very elegant look to those pictures.

¨ Remember that simplicity has classic appeal. It is not necessary to mount every photo. The layouts can be simple and straight forward. It is the journalizing which makes heritage albums so special. 

¨ If you can get all your photos mounted in your album, you can take your album with you and journal when you have a few minutes waiting in the doctor's office, waiting for your child to get out of school, etc.

¨ Appropriate Colors/Combinations:
    ¨ Navy and pale blue
    ¨ Brown and cream
    ¨ Blues and browns
    ¨ Neutrals plus dusty rose
    ¨ Pastels 
    ¨ Muted Colors
    ¨ Neutrals plus navy
    ¨ Black
    ¨ Beige

¨ Stickers 
    ¨ Victorian theme flowers and artwork
    ¨ Gifted Line Stickers
    ¨ Floral Stickers
    ¨ Use these minimally

¨ Diecuts
    ¨ Only use if they are really appropriate.
    ¨ Stay within your color scheme

¨ Pen/Ink Colors
    ¨ Brown
    ¨ Black
    ¨ Gold