A Big Family

As I promised I’ll be doing some Heritage scrapping this week and sharing my process of getting these photos in a scrapbook. 

When I received the photo of my mother’s large family, I was thrilled.  I’d never seen it before and was happy that I could recognize most of the people in it.  After I got the photo, I immediately wrote my aunt and asked her if she could put together a list of the people in the photo which leads me to one of the biggest reasons to scrap those old photos.  Let your children know who those people are and why the picture was important to you. Most of my journaling for this layout is just a head by head account of the people in the photo.  Now my children will be able to look at it and figure out who is who. 

This paper is Daisy D’s and it is certainly vintage.  I think the pink is a bit different for heritage photos but the paper has an aged appearance and the design is from the 40’s or 50’s.  I think it reflects the way I feel about my mother’s family. 

I used just a touch of brown Coredinations cardstock to mat the photos and as shadows for some of the embellishments. The darker pink is Bazzill and is raspberry. The light pink is just cardstock I had and is probably from Hobby Lobby.

When it came to the title of this page I chose one word. Family—there was no other word for it.  I have this huge heritage that I want to share with my children and their children.  I used Ashleigh’s Alphabet with the cursive feature and since there is no shadow feature for the cursive option, I played around with it on my Gypsy until I got it the way I wanted.  The F is cut at 3 1/2” and the rest of the word at 1".   I liked the way it looked when I was finished.  All the swirls are cut from Ashleigh’s Alphabet too.  I used my threading water punch on the mat for the big picture and then then faux stitched it.  The word Family was pop dotted to lift it away from the flourish behind it. 

The label holder is from my stash and I’ve long ago forgotten where I got it.  I attached it with brads and placed a piece of ephemera that I also bought a very long time ago.  You can also see the stickles that I added.  I have a hard time resisting the little bit of bling.  Love those Stickles.

The flowers are a mixture of Primas and Flora doodles with brads that have been sitting in my embellishment box for a long time.  It’s making me so happy that I am using up all my supplies. 

I included the photo of my mother and her twin sister to help my children make a connection between their grandmother and this rather large family.  Since my mother was a twin and photos were an not as easily acquired in the 40’s, my mother rarely had her picture taken without her twin sister.  My mother is on the left. Isn’t she pretty!  I think this photo was taken about two years after the big family picture was taken.  They had gone away to boarding school and the picture was taken there. 

The scalloped edge on the mat of this picture was accomplished with an old Fiskars template.  I traced it and hand cut it so that it would have even corners.  It’s always good to pull out old tools and let them see the light of day again. 

The most important thing about Heritage scrapping is to leave a record behind that tells who, what when and where. I especially wanted to leave a list of whom the picture included.  Believe it or not but there are several sisters who are not in the picture and one brother who died in infancy.  There was a grand total of 18 children. My mother and her twin were born third from last.  She died at the age of 75 and her oldest sister died one month later.  Estella was 99 years old.  When my mother was born the oldest siblings were already married and had children of their own.  What a family!  I am proud to call them mine.