Scrapbooking Relatives from the Past (Q&A)

It’s Q&A month and I’m answering your biggest questions about life, business, and simple scrapbooking.

How would you handle scrapbooking photos of people you don’t know?

For starters, this grouping of images likely wouldn’t be my top priority (to me) for scrapbooking in the traditional sense. I would probably preserve them in a photo album and even scan them to create a digital archive. If I had personal context to add to these images, I would create a photo album using pocket pages and add long sections of journaling on 6×12 pages.

The main exception to this approach would be when there is a clear story I can related, even if I don’t know names or dates. For example, a striking familial resemblance would beckon me to scrapbook a photo of someone I didn’t know along with the close family member. Also, stories of places that are significant within a family can be told using old photos.

In that sense, however, I see these images as being part of today’s story rather than part of a history-keeping project. With the latter, I try not to dwell on the information I don’t have. I document what I know, perhaps speculate a little, but generally try to keep it really simple. This helps me save more of my limited scrapbooking time for stories that are closest to my heart.

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