Scrapbooking Family History can be a treasured possession

by John Foster

Throughout several decades now, people have tried out several ways of preserving their family history. Maintaining photo albums, photo collages are some of the ways of maintaining a family history. People generally maintain family history to make the future generations get acquainted with their roots and also to treasure their family members. A comparatively newer way of maintaining family history could be scrapbooking family history. We all do know about scrapbooking. In fact, remember our childhood times, when we had to maintain a scrapbook for our school. Exactly, scrapbooking is a method for preserving a legacy of written history in the form of photographs, printed media, and memorabilia contained in decorated albums, or scrapbooks.

Documenting your family history can be a long process that involves plenty of research. Instead of simply using that information to complete a family tree, consider scrapbooking family history for future generations so that they can come to know about their roots. This allows them to put faces with names of those who they never got a chance to meet. Scrapbooking family history involves making sure you have the right information available before starting. Make sure that you incorporate all the accurate details and information while you go in for scrapbooking family history. You would also not want to exclude any family members during your scrapbooking efforts; therefore, you will have to make sure that you have all the information about all the members of your family. To make the process easier you may want to use loose leaf pages when scrapbooking family history. This way if you discover a mistake or you need to add additional family members you can keep things in chronological order.

At times preserving old photographs become a little tedious as they have the tendency of getting worn out easily, you may find that scrapbooking family history offers a good method for protecting them from further damage or deterioration. Photos can be easily copied at copy centers just as long as they are not professional photos that are copyright protected. If the photos are very old, consider copying them in black and white for scrapbooking family history. This allows you to use a high quality photo while persevering the era of the photo.

Scrapbooking family history can make a wonderful birthday or anniversary gift for parents and grandparents. They will definitely treasure a sentimental gift. Scrapbooking family history may not seem important right now but in the future, it actually has the potential of being one of the most treasured possessions of every family, after all who does not love to remember their family members, especially if they are away from them. Family is the one support system that supports without expecting anything in return. We all make friends but it is our family that supports us without even asking us to do so. Therefore, we should make sure that we know our family members and make our future generations know about them. So just start collecting the materials and start off with scrapbooking family history.

John Foster has special interest in arts. He gives advice to anyone who wants to know about online art school and scrapbooking and others. He refers to www.layersofourlives.com in many of his sessions for art school class for scrapbooking, Scrapbooking family history and DIY scrapbooking art,Scrapbooking Book.

Article Directory: Article Dashboard

Scrapbooking
In recent years scrapbooking has become a very popular hobby around the world. Memory books can be plain and simple or very intricate, depending on your taste, your creativity and your imagination.
Basic scrapbooking consists of 1 or more photographs laid out on special paper of your choice (patterned, plain, floral etc. ), along with journaling done with acid free pens and pencils. Stickers, attachments, embellishments and other things (lace, ribbons, fabrics, buttons, etc.) will enhance the pages , highlighting the overall theme of the page, as well as the time era the photograph was taken.

Albums
Albums come in various sizes, the most popular seems to be the 12" x 12" album, I personally prefer the 8.5" x 11" three-ring binders simply for the reason that most of my charts and are of that size.

Since scrapbooking is basically archiving family histories it is very important to take precautions to preserve your work so future generations will be able to enjoy them. We have provided a list of terms that you should familiarize yourself with when shopping for paper supplies.

Acid and Lignin

Anything that touches your photos should be acid-free and lignin-free, including paper, glue, markers and stickers so your photos will not discolor or disintegrate more quickly than they would naturally. Products that are photo-safe will be labeled as such.

What Is Acid-Free?

Acid causes paper and photos to disintegrate, this aging process is slowed significantly when acid is removed from paper during the manufacturing process. Be sure your paper, glue and markers are labeled acid-free or archival-quality before you purchase them.

What is Lignin?

Lignin is the natural bonding element which holds wood fibers together. Newsprint contains lignin and becomes brittle and yellowed after just a few days. Like acid, lignin can be removed during processing to make scrapbooking paper safe.
If you wish to include newspaper articles or announcements in your memory album, photocopy them onto acid-free, lignin-free paper. Use an off-white paper that resembles newsprint for an authentic look.

Archival quality

This is a term used to indicate materials which have been tested to determine that their acidic and buffered content is within safe levels.

Buffered paper

During manufacturing, a buffering agent such as calcium carbonate or magnesium bicarbonate may be added to paper to neutralize acid contaminants. Such papers will have a pH of 8.5.

pH Factor

This refers to the acidity of a paper. The pH scale runs from 1 to 14 with each number representing a ten-fold increase; pH neutral is 7. Acid-free products have a pH factor of 7 or above. Special pH tester pens are available to determine the acidity of products..

Photo safe

This is a term similar to archival quality but more specific to materials used with photographs. Acid-free is the determining factor for a product to be labeled photo-safe.

Sheet protectors

These are made of plastic to slip over a finished album page, They can be side loading or top loading and fit 5”x7”, 81/2”x11” or 12”x12” pages. It is important that they be acid-free.