Heritage scrapbooking

Heritage scrapbooking is all about preserving the older memories that tell the story of your family's background. Ome of the great pleasures of scrapbooking is to be able to bring old neglected family photos to life and to put a brief story to them. This way they can be set in the right context and will be a joy for current and future generations in your family.

And if you ever have the opportunity to present the coompleted layouts to the more mature people featured in the photos themselves, their reactions make any work that you have put in to the layouts to seem trivial.

So how do you set about building an attractive heritage scrapbooking layout?

If the subjects of the photos are available, allowing them to add their thoughts on the photos to the layout is a nice touch to consider. Ask them to write a short paragraph on their memories and add them to the layout.

As usual the look of the photos themselves can help drive the look of the layout.You may be dealing with real heritage photos with historical subject matter or look or you may have a more modern retro-style photo.

If the photos themselves are precious then don't use the originals on your layout. Get them scanned and this gives you the additional benefit of being able to do any touch-ups necessary in Photoshop or similar programs. (And copies for the subject themselves makes a lovely special occasion gift). Also great for scanning is anything else associated with the photo - is there some written description on the back or something else that goes with it? If there is, try scanning it and add it to your layout.

The real heritage photo lends itself well to a classic look with older style colours of browns, greys, yellows and burgundies and would be complemented by clean classical-style lettering.

Consider embellishments such as lace for an 'old' effect and velvet ribbon in the right colors will also fit in well.

If you want to use more modern embellishments, consider how you can make them fit in better. For example paper can be chalked to give it a more distressed look.

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