Pick the Fruit from Your Family Tree

A practical approach to scrapbooking all that genealogical information – By Elisha Barnett

When I first started researching my family’s genealogy about 15 years ago, I saw it as a challenge to find our roots – to do research to see how far back I could go. It was fun and exciting as I found new relatives by looking at census documents, marriage records, and other documents online. It’s amazing how fast a family tree can fill up by comparing trees and notes with long-lost cousins!

After chasing leads down rabbit holes and filling up as many branches as I could find, I really felt that I needed some way to share this information with my family. To tell a story, you must start at the beginning, right? I’ve seen wonderful, expansive documents that have been prepared by others with pictures and charts with exhaustive footnotes and references. That’s my fantasy, but nope, too hard, too overwhelming. So I didn’t do anything, and all the information and photos remained printed in three-ring binders and on my hard drive.

In my immediate and close family, I am the sole custodian of all of this treasure. While the rest of the family probably won’t ever get as excited as I do about family group sheets or pedigree charts, they are interested in where we’ve come from and in photos of the family, especially if they are connected to stories.

A perfectionist would gather all the information and then create a finished product, but I know that’s never going to happen. So instead of starting at the top of the tree and going down, I’m going to pick low-hanging fruit. If there’s a story I’ve got that connects with a picture that I have, I’ll put them on a page together. That aligns better with my digital scrapbooking passion as well. And while I may never have a finished “product,” I hope to create something beautiful and interesting to pass down.

I’d like to share my journey with you. To start, I’ve created a basic collection of coordinating backgrounds and embellishments called Generations which I’ve just released. It uses the beautiful browns and blues that look so wonderful with all of our old sepia photographs. Going forward, I will be creating new Generations products using the same or complimentary color palettes and style to retain a cohesive look to my pages. I’ll also be using the heritage products I already have in the Scrap Girls store. I hope you’ll follow along!