November Collab in store now!

The November Designer Collab - Hearth and Home - is available now in the Heritage Scrap Store. Filled with Fall colors and the comforts of home, these kits are perfect for scrapping your Fall Family Memories.

The Collab kits are all on sale for $2.50 each for the month of November.

Click on the preview of my kit to go to the Heritage Scrap Store for more information.

Life Book Week 6: Grandparents

by Victorian Rose on 30 Oct 2010 07:16

Welcome to Week 6 in our Life Book Challenge.

This week we are documenting our subject's Grandparents. This is the week we will be working on our parents' parents. Since we are branching out, you should have at least 2 layouts this week – or possibly 4 – depending on whether you choose to do a layout for each grandparent, or each couple.

As with parents, you may choose to do basic information, or do a more in depth layout.

Do you know who your subject's grandparents were? Or have you hit a brick wall? One thing you may wish to try is going to http://www.ancestry.com/. You can now type in the information you know and using information entered by other users, you may get a “leaf”. If your ancestors are already in their system, it will present you with a descendants chart that other users have entered, and give you some clues on where next to direct your research (please note: some information they give you is free, other information is only available through subscribing to their service, but it's worth a try to see what you can find!) Of course, you will want to verify any information you may find, and see if they give sources for where they obtained their information.

If you have access to your subject's birth certificate or baptism or christening documents, their parents will be listed. If you have their parents information, you can find their parents. Otherwise, you can begin to check census records for the years your subject's parents were living. For instance, if you are making a life book of your father's life, and he was born in 1908, look in the 1910 census for the county and town he lived in. Hopefully, you can find his family. (Your father would be listed as a two year old in the household.) From the census records, you will learn the names and ages of each person in the house at that time. Be sure to look at the other families on either side and down the road as you will often find other family members nearby. You may also learn (depending on what year you are looking at) what the head of the household did for a living, where each person and his parents were born, how old they were and whether they could read and write. Census records are fascinating and should be checked for each decade of your subject's life.

There are other sources that may also give information, including tax records, land lists, local newspapers, etc. Please check out the Heritage Hunting information by Vicki or attend one of her chats and share your dilemma. Vicki and the others at her chat will be able to give you some ideas for how best to direct your search.

Good luck!

Helene has been working on Life Books since the first round and I would encourage you to take a look at her albums. Here are some of her grandparents pages, which are good examples of Life Book layouts.












THIS WEEK IN THE STORE:

You may choose any kit that you would like that would work for your subject's grandparents.

My Grandparents Word Art:



My “Loving Couple” Quick Page would also work well for grandparents or parents.



Also available in 8 x 10.

Please post your completed layouts in the Week #6 Grandparents Gallery, and try to come back and post a link here so we can all go and leave you some love.

So that's it. Have fun and I'm looking forward to meeting your subject's grandparents!

Check out my blog:Victorian Rose Designs

Victorian Rose

Designer

Week 5: Parents

Week 5: Parents

by Victorian Rose on 19 Oct 2010 08:44

Hello, Ladies!

How are those Life Books coming? I'm enjoying your layouts and getting to know you (and your subjects). Your journaling is great and you are preserving memories for future generations that will be priceless! Great job!

This week we are going to focus on our subject's parents. How could we possibly tell a person's life story without telling where they came from?

One cannot know his destination if he does not know where he is coming from. Nor can one know who he is without knowing his past. -- unknown

If you are doing yourself (or your children) then you will have no trouble coming up with information about your subject's parents.

However, what do you do if your subject is the end line of your chart and you don't know who their parents are? Those end line ancestors are entirely frustrating and I often feel like a dog chasing its tail when researching them! So many documents were lost in courthouse fires or floods and where do you go when your regular methods of discovery don't work? If I were doing a life book of an endline ancestor, I would put all the details I had, along with my theories and maybe at some point, someone else down the line will be lucky and use your information to find the answers.

But, let's assume you do have photos of your subject's parents and know the details about them. What will we put on these pages? Remember that this Life Book will contain all the information about your subject that you want future generations to know. Unless you are also making a Life Book for your subject's parents, try to put as much information as you have about them. You may need to do multiple pages for different chapters in your book to get your stories in print.

You've already told the details of your subject's birth on your birth pages, and your childhood pages may or may not have contained details about your subject's parents. The parent pages are the places to focus on who the parents were and may include information such as:

Their names and dates of birth/death
How they met/married
Where they grew up
Jobs they had
Specific memories of them
Their later years/death (if they are deceased)

We will be doing pages later on “Family Life”, so we will have opportunity to put more details about the subject's family, vacations, pets, etc., so now we will focus primarily on Mom and Dad.

There are situations where one of the parents was not part of your subject's life due to Mother dying in childbirth or Father dying young or abandoning the family. While those memories are painful, I feel that it is important to document the facts for posterity. Did Grandma and Grandpa raise your subject? Definitely include those details, but also explain why. I'm sure we all know the frustration of finding information and asking “Why did that happen?” Don't make your descendants have to ask, “Why?”

Here are the pages Theresa (Forget Me Not) made that includes Pictures and Details of her subjects' Parents. This is an excellent example. She chose to make a separate page for each parent and give details of each...



And here are the pages I made for my Dad's book about his parents. These pages use my Quick Page Deluxe sets, For the Ladies and For the Men.





Now, as for recommendations for kits in the Heritage Scrap Shoppe, I think these pages that will fill the gallery this week will be as varied as your subject's parents. There is not one specific kit that says “Parents”.

You may choose a kit that complements the time frame you remember most, or you may have special memories about a certain flower or hobby – maybe Mom loved Forget Me Nots or Sewing. Maybe Dad worked on the Railroad. I'm sure you'll be able to find just the right kit to scrap your pages. If not, let us know and we'll make one for you!

I did a search in the store for Mom and Dad and several options came up, so this week, just have fun and enjoy scrapping your pages.

I have done a Parents Word Art set as well as a Mother Word Art Set and Father Word Art Set. You can find them in the Heritage Scrap Store.





Please post your completed layouts in the Week #5 - Parents Gallery, and try to come back and post a link here so we can all go and leave you some love.

So that's it. Have fun and I'm looking forward to meeting Mom and Dad this week!

Life Book (TM) Content Copyright 2009-2010 Vicki Pasterik Victorian Rose Designs

Check out my blog:Victorian Rose Designs

Week 4: School Days

** I was on vacation last week and didn't get Week 4 posted on my blog, so here it is. **

Week 4: School Days

by Victorian Rose on 11 Oct 2010 06:10

Welcome to Week #4 of the Life Book Challenge!

If you have just found us, feel free to jump right in and go back as you have time and finish the other pages we have done together.

Before we begin with our School Days pages this week, I just wanted to remind you that while we are running this as a challenge, you are making YOUR book, so I want you to put whatever you want in your book. If it takes you 4 pages to tell about a certain part of your subject's life, by all means, get those stories told! We are here to offer suggestions and guidance as we do this together. Please make these pages with a picture in the back of your mind of your grandchildren and great grandchildren reading this book someday in the far off future, and tell the stories and scrap the pages you want them to have.

Now then, let's talk about School Days! Every time I see the words “School Days”, I can't stop humming, “School Days. School Days. Dear old golden rule days.” That's the feeling of nostalgia I get when I scrap school days memories. You may be feeling nostalgic, too, as you think about one room school houses and McGuffey readers, or “Dick and Jane” or maybe you are scrapping your children's school days that may have very different memories of big 80s hair or neon Crayolas. In any event, many of the memories are the same – new school supplies in the Fall, friends, text books and new shoes.

I was VERY fortunate to be able to find a picture online of the school my Dad went to! And thankfully, my grandmother kept everything, so I have in my collection school pictures of my Dad and his brothers and sisters from the 1943-44 school year which made for a really great layout for my Dad's Life Book.
(Click on images to see larger versions in the gallery.)



I wanted to include my Dad's school memories, so I did a two page spread and included the journaling from my interview with him on the second page. I added another school photo at the bottom to break up the monotony of all the journaling.



My Dad's cousin, Millie went to the same school, so I did a similar layout for her life book using the same picture.




My favorite school layout, though, is this companion page from Millie's book. My cousin took his mom to a school reunion and someone had a picture of Millie's class when she was a little girl going to a one room school house. He managed to get a copy of the picture and sent it to me to use on this page. Millie was so thrilled to see that picture as she had never seen it before.



I was able to find websites about many remaining one room school houses in the U.S. by Googling. If your subject went to a one room school (or even a more modern school) you may just find a photo on line you can use.

If you don't have any photos of the school, look for a photo of your subject when they were school aged to include on your pages. If they are alive and you interviewed them (or are interviewing them as you go as I am doing), find out what they remember about their school days. Write those memories down to preserve them. Ask them what classes they remember. Who were their teachers? What did they have for their lunch? How did they get to school (up hill both ways in a snow storm? ) Do they have any special memories? Did they win the spelling bee? Did they marry their school days sweetheart? Do any school projects stand out in their mind? Those are the details that make an interesting page.

I have run into a brick wall with my Great Great Grandfather. The earliest photo of him is when he was a teenager. I know very little about his childhood except what I have learned from census records, regarding where he lived, etc. Then I had an idea. The census records tell what district he lived in as a child. I went to the website for the county he lived in and asked in the forums on GenWeb if anyone knew anything about the schools in the area around the Civil War, and where he might have gone to school. I'm hoping that someone might have some information for me based on what I know.

If your information and photos are limited, do some research on the type of schooling your subject would have had. The internet is full of information that you can use. If you don't have many pictures, I have some school themed sets with ephemera and elements that will make your pages come alive...

I have made a jam packed word art set for you which includes a School Days overlay, a page frame, a tag, titles and much more. You can find it in the store here...


There there is the School Days Element Set...



And, I also have a School Days Life Book Quick Page that is available in both 12 x 12 and 8 x 10 for your scrapping needs...



School Days Life Book Quick Page in 8 x 10

There are other School Themed Kits in the store - just type "school" in the search box to see everything Heritage Scrap has to offer.

So that's it. If you have any questions, or would like to discuss anything, please feel free to post in this thread.

Please post your layouts to the Life Book – Week #4 School Days Gallery by about 8:45 pm PT (just before the Chat) on Monday night, October 18th. Then we'll see you at the chat at 9 pm PT. Just go to the Heritage Scrap Chat Room - http://www.heritagescrap.com/Lets_Chat/

Have a great week and I can't wait to see that gallery start filling up!

Check out my blog:Victorian Rose Designs

Life Book Week 3: Childhood

Week 3: Childhood

by Victorian Rose on 07 Oct 2010 06:37

Welcome to Week 3 of the Life Book Challenge!

Our babies are growing up now, and we are moving on to the Childhood stage of life. This week should not be about their school days, as we will be doing that chapter next week. This page should demonstrate your subject's early childhood before school, or their life outside of school. It can include siblings, as they were a large part of your subject's childhood.

Remember, journaling is the key! If you didn't include information about what was happening in the world on your birth page, here's another chance. What kinds of things did kids do when your subject was a child? How much did they pay to go to the movies? Who starred in them? What songs did they listen to? This is a page everyone should be able to do, even with limited personal information.

If you don't know much about your subject's early childhood days, do some research into what was happening in the world during those years. If you have a photo of your subject, that's great. If you don't, concentrate on the journaling. What was life like for a typical child at that point in history? Who was their primary care giver? Did they have brothers and sisters to play with? Think outside the box!

When my cousin interviewed my dad's cousin, Millie, most of the stories she told him about her childhood had a lot to do with the things she did with (and to ) her sister growing up, so I did this page about sisters: (click for larger view in the gallery)



The other stories she told about her childhood, I just put together on a page I called Cherished Memories. I didn't have any pictures to go with the journaling, so I found some on the internet and asked a cousin who still lives in the area to take another one for me.



If you don't have any information at all about your subject's childhood, you may wish to do something like I've done here, in this layout called Two Generations as children.



Here's a page I made of my Dad and two of his siblings as children. (This uses my Childhood Quick Page.)



And speaking of kits and quick pages...

Here are some suggestions for you of my products that go well with the Childhood theme from the Heritage Scrap Store. There are also many other products by other designers that go well with the Childhood Theme.

QUICK PAGES

Life Book QP - Childhood (12x12) by Victorian Rose Designs

Childhood QP also available in 8 x 10

WORD ART

Chapters of Life: Childhood - Word Art by Victorian Rose Designs

This Good Old Days word art set might also work well for this page:

Good Old Days - Word Art by Victorian Rose Designs

So that's it for this week. Please post your layouts in the Life Book: Week #3 - Childhood Gallery and try to post a link back here in this thread.

Have fun! I can't wait to see your layouts!

©2010 Vicki Pasterik Victorian Rose Designs

Check out my blog:Victorian Rose Designs