Memorial Day Sale

One week, Thursday May 24 to May 31 sale on all my products at Heritage Scrap.  Happy Scrapping.  Enjoy your weekend with your family and remember why we have the extra day off work!

Blog Technical Help Please

I am wondering if any of you can recommend a blog comment software or add on for Blogger that notifies me of comments AND allows me to answer the comments via email or some format directly to the commenter.

On my previous blogs I have had this, but the company changed 3 times and I no longer know how to find it.  Thanks in advance for any help with this.  I never know if someone comments unless I go looking!

1940 Census, Genealogy, Sorting and Correcting Photos, Blogs etc

It has been awhile since I updated about the 1940 Census. Good news - Washington, DC is now indexed!  It's agonizing to wait but it's still fun to search.

While looking at the posts in the Ancestry Aces group at Facebook, I found some interesting blogs from other Ancestry Aces.  First I saw this post from Ancestral Breezes about organizing photos.  That reminded me that I signed up for another class with Linda Sattgast at Digital Scrapper.  The class I'm taking is Help For Heritage Photos.  It is self paced and I have permanent access to it.   Even though I've been using Photoshop Elements and/or Photoshop for at least ten years, I still picked up some great tips from Linda!

There was another great post on Ancestral Breezes from a guest blogger who makes the case for Printing Your Photos.  I know many scrapbookers are content to save their digital files, but the blogger makes some good points.  Also in my own experience CDs and DVDs only a few years old have been corrupted and the files become inaccessible and these were stored in good conditions.  External hard drives can crash just like an internal one.  Personally I feel it's good to have more than one back up. Printing scrapbooks is one way to save them in another format without printing up every single photo.  One thing that struck me from the blog post is that we live in an "at the moment" world. Everything digital fast and in the moment then moving on quickly to something else.  Scrapbooks can be timeless in the sense that one hundred years later they are just as interesting, if not more so.

The Genealogy Search posted her favorite picture as the Ancestry Aces suggested we should.  When she did five people were unidentified but someone reading her blog was able to identify them!  I think I've mentioned on here before about building blogs for some of my different lines so that I can connect with other family members.  I've had some fun experiences with that.

So this has me thinking about my favorite heritage photo.  I have so many photos, it's hard to decide on just one.  So I'll get back to you on that one.  Do you have a favorite?  Have you scrapped it or blogged about it?  I'd like to see.  And do you have any recommendations on fun genealogy or heritage blogs? Let's share!

May Sales - Amethyst Heritage and Add On

iNSD may be over but May sales continue!  Amethyst Heritage Album and Add On kits are 25% off through May.  I've been "playing" with them to make layouts  and really enjoying - of course purple is my favorite color!

Today I used the quick page from the Add On and added flowers and leaves from the main kit, to create this arrangement of our family photos from last year.  If you purchased Amethyst or any of my other kits - I would love to see what you made with them!

Happy (inter)National Scrapbook Day! (Oh Yeah, A Coupon Too)

Heritage Scrap is celebrating (inter) National Scrapbook Day for 5 days!  Catch the coupon code on the picture above and have fun shopping.  You can find my corner of the shop here.  Have fun!

NEW - Amethyst Heritage Kit and Add On

Today I'm very excited to introduce you to my new kits - Amethyst Heritage and Amethyst Heritage Add On.  First, the colors are some of my favorites and second, I loved all the textures and designs in the papers - they once again remind me of fabric and inspire me to quilt and sew!  Like my other big kits with add ons, these two are designed so that if you wanted to, you could do an entire album if you chose.

Ahhhhh.... purple!  My favorite! These are just some of the papers in Amethyst, but they are the ones which gave the kit it's name!

Some of the Amethyst Heritage Kit Elements.

And here are more of the Amethyst Heritage Kit papers.  My goal was to give pattern but to keep it soft so that the photos could come to the foreground and tell the story.

Included in the kit are lots of frames, journals notes and labels and two pedigree overlays - one is 4 generation and one is 5 generation.



Element Clusters and Borders from Amethyst Heritage.

The special papers - these were fun to make and I can't wait to use them as well.

Quick pages from the Amethyst Heritage Kit - a family photo tree, a 3 generation family photo pedigree and a layered/stacked book page.

Today I played with the quick page and made a photo tree starting with my Grandpa, Alden Hopkins.  More design elements or journaling could be added, but I decided to just use it as it comes, so people can see what comes with the kit.

And now for the add on kit. I tried to include different items in this kit so that it is not just "more of the same".  Combined with the original kit, you will surely have more than enough to create a whole family history album.

These are the quick pages from the add on kit.

I used one of them today to create my own four generation family tree.  Again, in my completed version I will add more decorations to personalize it but I wanted to share it "as is", so that you can see what the product is like if you don't want to add anything else.  It took some work but it was really nice to see the end product of all those faces that make up me!

Papers from the Add On, just a few more to give you variety.

Frames, elements and journaling pieces.





Pedigree charts (4 and 5 generation), titles and tree elements.

A selection of card stock to mix and match with everything else.

Phew!  That was a lot of previews!  I hope you enjoyed.  Hint:  Tomorrow NSD sale starts!

Cottage Bouquet May Designer Collaboration Kit

Cottage Bouquet is the name and theme of Heritage Scrap's May Designer Collaboration Kit.  There are many more parts than what are shown in this preview and you can find them all here.

Each of these re a mini kit and you can choose the parts you like from the various designers to create a mega collab or just choose one.  During the month of May, each kit is $2.50!

Here is my portion of Cottage Bouquet and you can find it my section of the store.  Each kit contains enough to make at least two pages.

Here are my papers.  Sometimes it's hard to show in a preview what things look like and I felt that was the case with these pictures.  The colors and patterns are soft and water color like.

I hope you enjoy!  Stay tuned for a new kit.  Hint - the name is Amethyst Heritage Kit.  And I'll be posting announcements and information about National Scrapbooking Day at Heritage Scrap.  Thank you for stopping by today.