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.

My Great Grandfather and His Daughter

Recently I have been going through a lot of boxes that my Mother brought me with things from my Grandma's house.  My Mother saved me bits and pieces that she knew I would treasure.  She kept spiral notebooks on her end table where she sat and filled them with all kinds of good "stuff"!  She always said "'stuff' is a good word, it's in the Bible 8 times".  She had looked it up in the concordance.  That's just how she was.  Anyone who lived in her town could see her little white "dandelion" head sitting on her couch in front of the front window.  She read her Bible, Grace Livingston Hill and Essie Summers books.  In her "handy dandy notebook" she wrote down lists (copiously) of names she liked.  "My Hobby", she penned next to some of the lists. She copied down phrases that she liked from her reading (I too enjoy a well phrased novel and smile at the descriptions and words I know she would have jotted down).  There were hundreds of pages of Bible study notes, lists of animals, plants and birds in the Bible and key verses to memorize (I plan on doing my devotional studies from some of these pages this year).  I could go on for several more paragraphs about the kinds of things I found, but I won't! ;-)

Last night a little slip of paper fell out of one of those notebooks and I have included it on the page above.  Tucked in amongst quotes, lists and so on, here and there are family history gems.  It is truly like a treasure hunt.  This particular note talked about her Dad, my great grandfather Fred (F.W. Tisdale), who was quite an interesting man. Because of this little note I now know where my Grandma, my Mother and I got our love of quotes.  As I read it, I remembered her telling me this before.  Every Monday, Mr. Tisdale would write an inspirational quote on the black board. He said it would "rub off" on his students.

The note also listed the last two places he taught and was superintendent as well as what subjects he taught.  On the back side were some of the silly quotes he would say.  He was fun loving by all accounts (he died in 1940) and most picture show him with a twinkle in his eye.

This man I never met, passed on so much to me through his oldest child, his daughter Holly - faith, creativity and a love of learning. There are some pesky traits he pass on too, but no need to mention those here! HA HA!

Today I created a layout with his school superintendent photo, that slip of paper in Grandma's school teacher printing and a photo of all the students of Lake Stevens (WA) High School in 1922.  For the layout, I used primarily my new School Days Kit along with a key from my His Story - Family Tree Kit which shares the same color palette.

Thank you for taking a journey down memory lane with me today!

2008 Snow

This was a fun layout to do because it is totally different than my usual. This is using Jen Ulasiewicz' "Primative Christmas" kit and her tree bark alpha. My best friend Shelley sent me the pictures via email because she knew how homesick I am! The pictures make me want to be there even more. Of course now it's raining and melting and slushy and gray. But, one can always dream!

Hoh Rain Forest

This is going to be the title page in the section of my summer vacation for our trip to the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park. It is so beautiful there! I am having fun being able to use my own photography any size I want with digital scrapbooking!

For this page I used my photo of the "Hall of Mosses" and decreased the opacity, so that it blended with the background paper. I used a kit from Scrapbook Elements called Bear Grass Summit. The designer, Jeri Ingalls has several kits that work well for nature photography, camping, hiking and being in the outdoors. I hope to get more in the future. The letters came from the November Scrapbook Artisan's Guild kit by Dee Brestin.