Hello Friends!
Are you one of those lucky scrappers who’ve inherited a cherished family photo album, or a couple of shoeboxes full of old family photos? Good for you! You’re already well on your way to scrapping beautiful and compelling family history pages.
Alas! many of us are not so lucky. Maybe you have a branch of the family that just didn’t do photographs? Or perhaps a treasured family album was lost to flood or fire? or mistakenly sold off at a yard sale (that time when my dad accidentally sold my mother’s beautiful satin wedding gown at a garage sale!…)? Or maybe you’ve taken a deeper dive into your family history, and want to scrap about an ancestor who lived and died before the invention of photography in the mid-19th century?
In this post, I want to give you some ideas, and show you some examples, of how to scrap an interesting and visually appealing layout about your photoless ancestor. Some of these layouts are entirely photoless, while others make use of photos of items/places relating to an ancestor.
Use Documents to Tell Your Story
Have you uncovered an interesting/amusing/tragic story about one of your ancestors? Use documents and maps to scrap the story. For this layout, I used a couple of newspaper clippings, along with a 1901 Sanborn fire insurance map which shows the exact location where young Frank Finnerty was killed in a dreadful workplace accident in 1902. Some other document ideas: census records; vital records (birth, marriage, death); church records; city and county directories.
(Note to scrappers with American ancestors: the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, available online at the Library of Congress, are public domain and free to use.)
Scan or Photograph an Artifact or Heirloom
For this stunning layout, Iowan scanned the varsity letter, which is almost 100 years old. I love how her (detailed and fascinating) journaling follows the shape of the letter E. Perhaps you’ve inherited a family Bible, a dog-eared old cookbook or school yearbook, a wedding dress (unless your dad accidentally sold it at a garage sale…!), a pair of cuff links, or a piece of jewelry? A scan or photograph of a physical object can provide a striking visual focus for your page. And by the way, if you don’t have enough information to fill your page with journaling, as Iowan has done, please don’t let that deter you: just a brief description of the item can suffice, and you can fill up the rest of your page with all sorts of scrappy goodness (papers, elements, paints, stamps, and so on).
Focus on Buildings/Locations
Here Pachimac evokes a sense of time and place with a layout about the motel that her great-grandmother and grandfather used to run in Salinas, California. It’s a lovely tribute to her ancestors, which tells a compelling story not only about her family but also about the passage of time. If you don’t have a photograph of your ancestor’s house/farm/business, you might be able to find a photograph of his or her hometown, or of a nearby landmark building that can help set the tone for your page. Another idea is to use a vintage map.
Focus on Occupations
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor… What did your ancestor do for a living? The concept for this layout was directly inspired by a kit: when I saw the fun lumberjack stamp in FJD’s Wild at Heart kit, I knew I wanted to use it, but wasn’t sure how. Then I recalled that some of my ancestors were lumberjacks, and I decided to make their occupation the subject of my page. I then followed up with layouts about my Railway Ancestors and, not to forget my female ancestors, about my Seamstress Ancestors as well. And speaking of female ancestors: was your grandmother a homemaker? That’s an occupation too!
Scrap Your Family Tree
Another fun option is to scrap your family tree. With a family tree page, you can combine useful factual information with gorgeous papers and elements, as mcurtt’s layout so beautifully demonstrates. And don’t worry if you don’t have enough information to scrap a 3- or 4-generation tree. You can do a branch, or a twig, or you can represent a single family in a family tree format.
Take Your Own Photo
For this beautiful and unique layout, tanteva had her picture taken in front of a portrait of her 12x-great-grandmother! The painterly background is the perfect complement to this ingenious photo. Now, admittedly, most of us will not find portraits of our ancestors at a museum or gallery. But: you might take a picture of yourself in front of the welcome sign for your ancestor’s town of origin, or beside an ancestor’s gravestone, or at some landmark that relates to your ancestor’s life story.
There are so many ways to scrap a page about your ancestor, even without a photo of your ancestor. And one of the great things about digital scrapbooking is that you can fill in some of the blanks with beautiful papers, elements, word art, journal cards, paints and stamps, and so on. It’s a great way to exercise your creativity, while recording valuable information for future generations to enjoy.
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