Genealogist Laura Best follows up her well-received Genealogy for the First Time® with a colorful volume dedicated to techniques for preserving precious ancestral memories through scrapbooking. Use those vintage photos, uncovered documents, and newly-found family stories to create scrapbooked family trees and pedigree charts, eight generation treatments, depictions of holidays and family reunions through the years, and histories of family homesteads. Inscribe notes on ancestors’ occupations and hobbies, anecdotes, celebrations, and sad moments: every memory worth passing on to children, grandchildren, and generations to come. The page designs all draw on color schemes and images common to various time periods, and there are also techniques for displaying the scrapbooked material in shadow boxes and frames.

Let your creativity go wild with these great scrapbooking techniques. Learn all the basics: choosing and using equipment, mounting photographs, adding paper frames, matting, die-cutting, incorporating decorative and natural papers, and working with templates and rub-ons. Each technique builds on the one before in a natural progression, from coloring black-and white pages with pens to project pages that introduce ideas and products. A gallery of professionally made scrapbook interiors is included to provide guidance and encouragement.

Scrapbooking and quilting are each two-billion-dollar industries: combine them and you have a collection that will fly off the shelves!

A scrapbook gets put away; a quilt goes on display—perhaps framed and hung, or draped over the couch. These 24 original quilts incorporate the same treasured photos and memorabilia that normally go into a scrapbook, but in a unique format. They’re fun to make, too, thanks to the many innovative techniques that are easy for a beginner and refreshingly new to the experienced quilter. Direct-print favorite pictures onto fabric with an ink-jet printer. Tea-dye material to make it look antique, creating a perfect background for vintage photos. Extensive opening sections on art and design basics provide a plethora of invaluable tips.

There are no rules to scrapbooking, but there is a vast array of possibilities for newcomers to the craft. What products should they buy? What techniques should they try—and how can they get great results? This fabulous guide explains it all. Inspirational photos and sample scrapbook pages throughout showcase different albums, illustrate photo-improvement methods like cropping, and demonstrate the use of shadow stamping, painted backgrounds, metallic rub-on waxes, and unique embellishments like buttons, buckles, and charms. Special sections delve into more unusual techniques like aging and texturing, incorporating ribbon and lace trims, and creating pockets.