Family Gathering - August 2012 Designer Collaboration

Family Gathering is my portion of the August 2012 Designer Collaboration Kit.  Traditionally for Heritage Scrap's birthday month, our collaboration in heritage/genealogy themed.  This year our theme is the family gathering and I have interpreted that as family reunion.  I love family reunions - it's the one time when people are usually interested in all the hard work I have done on the family research!

Here are the elements.  The  collaboration kits are made to be good starting points.  Remember to check out the collection.  The designer's pieces work together and are available for $2.50 during the month of issue.  Many of the designers also work on add on kits.  I will show mine further below.

Papers Preview - I chose to keep the papers pretty simple.  The reason is because reunion pictures are often full of lots of detail - groups of people, various activities and so on. Busy photos and busy paper don't work well, in my opinion.

In the collab you will find:

12 12x12 300 dpi Papers

15 Elements

3 Titles
2 Frames
1 Journal Paper
2 Labels
1 Tag
1 Ribbon
1 Bow
1 Tree
2 Flowers
1 Leaf

So then I kept designing and created the Family Gathering Add On Kit.  That was a lot of fun!

Elements - including a "golden" family tree, some vintage clusters and lots of flowers.

Frames and journal portions.  I wanted to include a lot of journaling and labeling options because family reunions are often the places where you tell stories, learn new things, discover new relatives - the details should be included with the photographs!

Some of the papers - I have tried to make a combination of vintage and modern feel and have included a few "trees" for backgrounds as well.

More papers to choose from.

And then there are all the titles.  I included 42 titles, some of which could be mixed and matched to title pages for reunions, family tree projects or other family gatherings.

The Family Gatherings Add On Kit includes:

24 12x12 300dpi Papers

80 Elements:

42 Metallic Gold Titles
9 Frames
1 Journal Cluster
1 Journal Book
2 Labels
1 Label Holder
2 Bows
2 Buttons (1 recolored)
1 Element Cluster
1 Tree
1 Fern
2 Leaves
2 Flower Clusters
5 Flowers
1 Lace
1 Doily
3 Ribbons
1 Tag
1 Border Cluster

Next, I created a Quick Page Pack.  This was a lot of fun.  Included are two family tree pedigree chart pages, one with an opening for a photo and special journaling and a vintage French memo board with memorabilia and slots to place in two of your favorite photos.  To match with this page I created a blank memo board paper and you can place your photos, journaling or memorabilia on top.

For my Hopkins pedigree chart, I began with the quick page, then I added the two small frames from the Add On Kit, some photos and Hopkins as a title.  You can place more information on your ancestors if you like.  For time's sake I chose to only include birth and death years.

Here is another pedigree page.  The only thing I added to this is the surname in the center.

Here is the French Memo Board.  I used this quick page "as is" except for adding the title "Memories" from the add on kit.

This quick page is great for lots of journaling.  I added the element cluster on the upper right, but otherwise used it as is.

This page is created using only my collaboration portion and will be a cover/opening page for our family reunion.

These photos chronicle my Grandma Hopkins' early life and include one as I remember her growing up.  Both the collab and the add on were used for this.

This is my favorite of the pages I created using the kits.  I believe this one uses only the Add On kit.  Extra embellishments were added onto the book cluster.

Ruth Taylor Wolcott

This layout is about my ancestress, Ruth Taylor Wolcott 1838-1928.  I used a stacked paper from the My Family Tree Add On kit and embellishments were added from the My Family Tree Kit.

Family Treasures

I am so excited and disappointed at the same time!  My Mom told me about all the treasures that she and my Aunt found, going through all of my Grandma's things after they had been storage for 8 years.  The disappointment comes because I'm almost 900 miles away from my Mom and can't "eyeball" them myself.  My Mom had a fantastic day with her family and the two sisters had fun remember things, laughing, tearing up and then getting back on task.

My Grandma Hopkins is a social historian's dream.  Growing up relatively poor and being a newlywed when the Great Depression hit, she learned to save everything!  It was a bane to those who had to clean out her house where she had lived about 70 years, but a boon to me - the family's historian!  So much happens in a person's life that sometimes we don't even really know what we don't know!  We don't know what questions to ask!

Some of the boxes contained slips of her hand crocheted lace, fabrics and the little "bits and bobs" that you save because you might need something some day.  A few held her costume jewelry and a little doll that is about 100 years old.  Other things were more mundane like the apple box in the layout above.  My Mom remembers that her father received a gift box of fruit every year and it was always a happy occasion when it arrived (life certainly was much simpler then, wasn't it?).  This is one of the boxes - Grandma saved and reused everything.

Other boxes hold treasures that have me salivating in anticipation.  Grandma kept her diploma from "Normal School", her life time teaching credential and every teaching contract she ever had from the 1920s to the 1960s!  These will help me fill in the blanks as I share her story.  Another treasure was a family Bible about 140 years old from the Wolcott side of my family.  Several other Bibles were found belonging to my grandparents and great grandparents.  Both my grandfather and great grandfather spent some time as pastors.  There are even some Bible study and sermon notes from my Grandpa.  Since he died before I was born, I'm anxious to read them and see if I can step into his mind a little and get to know him.

Then there is the whole wooden trunk stamped F.W. Tisdale - whose treasures are yet to be discovered.  My family historian heart grows faint in anticipation!!!

Well I'll have to be patient.  My poor mother can't scan and photograph everything in the first 24 hours now, can she?

I had to do something with my excitement so I created the layout above using Jean Daugherty's Apple Hill Kit which coordinated with that apple box.  If any of you locals are reading this, yes, it's made about our Apple Hill!  It's one of the loveliest apple kits I've ever seen and I have no hesitation in recommending it!

What unexpected treasures have you found?