Ethnic Scrapbooking

Two Years Ago

I watch a lot of Law & Order with my husband. You can always count on hearing the question, "Where were you on the night of so and so?" So I decided to ask myself that question about what was I doing on this date two years ago.

Here's a two page spread from an album I did about ME! For thirty days I wrote down the tid bits of my daily life. I got this idea from Rebecca Sower's book and I started it immediately. I try to do at least one little mini-album about myself each year...so I won't be forgotten:)

I'm working on a curriculum for a workshop and I'd love to hear how you scrapbook/journal about yourself. Does it read like a diary, an autobiography, do you use lists, quizzes or is it just random thoughts?

Last of the Snow

Snow pages are probably the least topic I've scrapbooked. We just really don't get that much snow here in the Washington, DC area. I'm sure that this snow ball is the last one my kids will see for a long while. In fact this was almost all the snow in my folks back yard 2 weeks ago.

I'm so ready for Spring I got my toenails painted pink!

Here are a few shots from Deep Creek Maryland the same weekend.

CK Hall of Fame announced

I just heard the 2007 were inducted, click HERE for the list. Glad to see African-American Bernadette Henderson made the list and Cindy Liebel also made the Honorable Mention list. The first male was inducted...(see Adrion, I told you to enter).

For those who may not know, this is a contest sponsored by the largest scrapbook magazine and it's considered to be a big deal to be inducted. When I first heard about it years ago, I thought it was kind of hokey, but after studying the winners, it's a great stepping stone if you want to move into the industry at a professional level and earn a few extra bucks, start a business or even a new career. I think it's amazing what this contest can propel folks into, absolutely amazing. I was telling a male co-worker about it and he was utterly amazed...wait until I tell him how many of those scrapbook businesses we audit!

Power of Paper

I've always had a love affair with paper...heavy weight textured cardstock, handmade paper, notebook filler paper, watercolor paper and now newspaper...finding an ancestors obituary in someone elses collection spured excitement in me and my Dad. I think he was even more thrilled in finding out that he's not the only one with a huge obituary collection. Seeing someone else's collection spurred him to go ahead and place all of his clippings in a scrapbook and publish them too.

Take a extra minute to ask family members what obituaries they have stuffed in Bibles, in drawers, shoeboxes and trunks. Make a copy and preserve it on a scrapbook page, if you don't have a photograph of that story try to glean some fact about their life and find an appropriate embellishment, die-cut or something.

Scrapbooking is not always about preserving the memories, but building them too. Signora will be a memory that I build over the next few months by asking questions about her and of course hunting down a photograph of her. I already have a story of someone named after her.

Geneaologists vs Scrapbookers

At the conference this past weekend, I met a number of geneaologists and family historians, none of which considered themselves scrapbookers. One even shared with me that they hate scrapbookers because they cut out all the important references. I thought that was interesting, maybe because I always teach folks to trim clutter or dead space, but to leave what may be an historical reference point to later generations. My view of the two classifications of historians is that while there goals are similar their presentations are just different.

Most geneaology compilations I see are three-ring binders full of documentation (census records, marriage & birth certificates and etc). I pull together my family history using those same documents, but I weave in the story, I try to put the documents into context. For instance I just shared with my cousin Dawn last night, that one of the historians had her GREAT Grandmother's obituary from 1931...see it was just a newspaper clipping in a binder, but add to it who her children were, where she lived and how she was related to the coal industry it becomes a more interesting story.

A family of geneaologists researching the African American coal miners from Whitsett. I Can't wait to connect with them again, to work with them in recruiting other Fayette countians to preserve their family history too.

Sharing

I want to share this photo of the coal and coke center's display table. Since book promotion is on my mind these days, I was very attracted to it for many reasons. One, I love quilts...I'd have everything patchwork if I could, those who have been to my house will recognize that theme throughout my house...you'll see why in my new book. Two, the little glass shapes are beehive coke ovens, I think they are cute. The figurines are carved out of pieces of coal...love that. The book to the right, well my Grandmother shared her story of growing up in a coal town with the author so she's featured in there and we donated a black & white photograph of a wedding party from our family collection to be used in the book too.

I try to encourage people to share their stories and their photographs, without always attaching a "price" to everything. This display is special to me because of our family's effort to SHARE, resulted in a different perspective to the African American history of Fayette County, Pennsylvania.

So go ahead and share a story with me, I'd love to hear it.

Lisa/Lisa Crop March 24

We still have some seats available. Here's the link to the Download march_24th_crop.pdf

Coal and Coke Heritage

My father was a panelist at the Coal and Coke Heritage Center's Conference this past weekend. My role was to pull from our family collection all the information I could about African American Coal Miner's their families and lifestyle. It was a huge task but my Dad and I did manage to pull quite a few documents and photographs to donate to the museum. Now we just need to type up the narrative.

When I first visited this heritage center 5-6 years ago, I was annoyed at the lack of diversity displayed. I knew from my research that there were many ethnicities involved in the coal industry, but I felt it wasn't accurately displayed at the center. I vowed then, to start pulling my family's information and submit it to the museum. Well it came to fruition this weekend. The center had a major renovations and three of our family photos are now on display.

Here's my Dad being interviewed by the local television station about the conference and the contributions our family made to the heritage center. The sand painting (custom made for us in Senegal, West Africa) standing on the floor was on display for the weekend. We donated a copy of the original drawing to the museum, it's mounted on the wall above the painting. The painting is of my father's grandparents on their porch steps with my grandmother in her mother's lap and her brother on her father's lap. We date the drawing to be around 1919.

I'll do more posts this week on the event because it's the heart of my mission in teaching scrapbooking. I'll share with you why this lifestyle is so important.

Technology

As a mother of a pre-teen, sometimes the internet can be a very scary thing...but today it was worth its weight in gold (hmmm... where did that saying come from). My parents lost touch with my God mother over the past few years and my mother mentioned her a few weeks ago. It's so much harder to track down females, because they tend to not use their whole names. Well, my God Mother's niece found my sister on myspace (still can't figure out exactly how that happened we haven't seen her for a good 20+ years) and today I will give my folks phone numbers so that we can all re-connect...isn't technology GREAT.

Here are my God Parents with me at my christening...I bet you can guess what decade I was born.

Colossal Crop in NJ

Although I said I wasn't going to teach at the Memories Expo again this, I couldn't resist to help Tasra Dawson at her very first COLOSSAL CROPat the Memories Expo in NJ next month. I hope you can join us, it will be a fun time to fellowship with other REAL WOMEN who hold down jobs, raise children and live a "real" life.

Check out Chela's BLOG for an example of how real women scrap. Sounds like she's reading the book, Real Women Scrap.