Family History Crafting

Aren’t old photographs, documents, letters and postcards fascinating? They provide such an intimate snapshot into the life of our ancestors. I for one find it so interesting to see how my grandparents, great grandparents and beyond communicated, what they looked like and what they valued.

I love the texture of old, delicate, stained paper. The often indecipherable swirly flourishes of handwriting, the faded stamps pasted on envelopes concealing love notes or maybe just a shopping list.

Since my grandparents have passed away I have been lucky enough to have access to some beautiful original documents, candid photographs, intimate letters and exquisite peeks into their hidden lives and histories. It is magical to witness the childhoods, teenage years and early adulthood of my grand parents, great grandparents and beyond.

There is so much to learn from these documents, and there is so much beauty within them that it is a shame not to share them with the world.

I have been working hard to create some beautiful ephemera and journaling kits using these precious documents and photographs. I have a lot more to look through and explore but I’d love to share with you this week two kits I have made that you can purchase and download from my Etsy shop to use in your own journals, collages, papercrafts and scrapbooks.

The first is the Family History Paper Dolls Kit which includes 5 sheets of vintage photograph figures edited from my own families historical document collection. I have used this kit to create the tags and altered envelopes pictured in the images in this post.

Secondly I have created a vintage postcard digital pack which include 9 pages of the fronts and backs of vintage postcards. My Mom amassed a large collection of postcards from collecting them as a child and its been so much fun going through and looking at all the happy holiday memories of my families past. When you download this kit from my Etsy shop you can use the postcards as ephemera for junk journals, journaling cards, turn them into pockets, or send them again as postcards yourself as a fun gift to a pen pal!