Ooodles O'Irish!

It's just about time for the wearing o' the green as St. Patty's Day is just around the corner. Who's got Irish ancestors? Irish friends? Irish neighbors? Who's taken a trip to Ireland? Who's gone out drinking green beer on the day we honor Ireland's beloved patron saint? I know you answered "ME!" to one or more of those questions... I know you have pictures... which means you need some St. Patty's Day scrapbooking kits! Lucky for you, I have some wonderful (free for a limited time, as usual) kits that you're gonna love!

First off from Nore's Nice-ities blog we have a wonderful St. Patrick's freebie kit. Check out these previews...

Aren't they great?!!! To download your free kit go to Nore's blog for the Feb. 29th thru March 13th posts and you will find the links to download this kit. Don't forget to leave a comment of appreciation for today's designers. Your compliments are their paycheck!

Next from the Angel Wings and Things blog we have this lovely kit called Luck of the Irish!
I just love that pot of gold with the rainbow! The swirly is a pretty cool element too! You can get this fun and festive kit here.

Here's another terrific kit with rich and textured dark green tones. There's more to this kit than is shown in this preview. Stop by and check out Claddagh Love, from Belanna's At Odds blog.. It's beautiful...


You can download Claddagh Love here.

So there you have three wonderful and varied kits to use for scrapbooking your St. Patty's Day family photos. One more little treat for you and you should be all set. Last but not least, here's some Irish word art from Kathy's Coffee Stop blog. Add some of Kathy's word art and your photos to any of the scrapbook kits above and you're all but done creating some great art work!

Now go get creative with your genealogy!

This article will be featured in the March 17th edition of Lisa's Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture.

Another Time and Place: States

Sometimes it's nice to place our ancestors in the areas where they lived. Often times we have a photo that was taken in the town where they grew up but no good "setting" for it. That's when city or state themes come in handy for creating digital scrapbook pages. Unless your ancestors came from big cities that have a theme (like "the big apple" or "the windy city") you may be hard pressed to come up with a city theme. But state themes are a lot easier to create. Each of our great United States is known for something and that "something" can become the theme for your scrapbook page.

If this sounds like just the thing to you, you'll be excited about what I have to show you today. Deltapdawn of the Scrapping 'Til Dawn blog has a series of state templates going that will give you a great place to start in creating a state theme page for your photos. She started the series back in January and is still going strong. I don't know if she's planning to do all 50 states or not but I know she's taking requests. I requested a page for Michigan and she posted it on February 23rd.
You can do a search for your state of interest by entering it in the search box in the upper left corner of the page. If you don't find what you're looking for, leave her a request as a comment.

If you don't know how to make use of a template for digital scrapbooking check out this easy tutorial done by Misty on the Misty Cato blog. You can create a great looking page in minutes using a template... most of the work is done for you!

Here's an example of what I created using the Michigan template:

It took me about 40 minutes to throw this page together using Deltapdawn's template. I could have done it more quickly but it took me a while to decide on a photo and a kit to use ;-) The papers and elements are from a kit called "Bluestorm" from the Scrappy Blue Stones blog (this kit is no longer available for free but it is available for purchase here).

So, there you go. Templates can save you a lot of design time and these in particular can help set the scene of your ancestor's pictures. They would also work great for scrapping family vacation pictures!

Now go get creative with your genealogy!

Charting Your Family's History

I've certainly been remiss about posting to this blog, haven't I? I do apologize. I got distracted with other things, namely my mtDNA test. I got my results back a couple weeks ago and I'm a member of haplogroup H. Ever since then I've been spending a lot of time creating a new blog and reading up on what's known about haplogroup H. I'll make up for my lapse by posting 3 times this week, how's that?

It's been a while since I've written about anything other than digital scrapbooking. But there are other ways to get creative with your genealogy. A new piece of software is available for creating wall charts from your genealogy data. The software is called Legacy Charting and it's available for free from the folks at Legacy Family Tree software until June 15, 2008.

This is one fun and easy to use piece of software. You do need a data file of your genealogy but just about any will do. It doesn't have to be a Legacy file (although the standard edition of Legacy is a free download if you don't already have genealogy software ;-) . Legacy Charting will accept files from most of the major database players including Family Tree Maker as well as the industry standard GEDCOM file format.

Once you download and install the program it will go out and find your genealogy database files and compile a list for you to choose from. Then you select a file and a chart type and you're on your way! There are lots of options to play with from changing chart types to changing fonts, colors, and which information to show. My favorite feature is the mtDNA chart which will display your maternal line (your mother's mother's mother's line) showing just who is carrying the same mtDNA. Something to reflect on during March, National Women's History Month. Just who are those women whose DNA we carry inside us and pass on to our children?

Legacy charts can be saved in a number of file formats including PSD, JPG, and TIFF. The charts can be printed in one piece or separate pages that can be tiled together. Just think of what a great conversation piece this would be to display at your next family reunion!

So what are you waiting for? Go get creative with your genealogy!

Another Place and Time: Africa

It's February and that means it's Black History Month here in the U.S. This week's featured digital scrapbooking kit freebie is for all those with African ancestory or for those who just like to vacation in Africa (I've always thought it would be cool to go on a safari... the photo ops would be phenomenal!). This kit is actually a whole series of kits on the African theme, in just about every color combination you could imagine. Check out these previews...









Are these great kits or what??? They are all available on the Wonderful Waste of Time blog (don't you just love that name?). You can get all the download links for these kits here. This designer is so very talented and generous to share her kits for free. Don't forget to say thanks!

Now go get creative with your genealogy!

February 2008 Digital Scrapbooking Carnival

The February edition of the Digital Scrapbooking Carnival is available here. Check it out and learn something new today! Actually, I bet you could learn several somethings from the links in this carnival. Great lessons to be learned...

Another Place and Time: Vintage Valentines

Valentine's Day is just around the corner. If you're looking for period Valentine images to use in scrapping your family photos, look no further! First I'd like to share with you a wonderful kit from Sally at Winged Heart Ohio blog. The image below shows her recent addon to a very large kit she created last year. Victorian images and Valentine's Day just go hand in hand, don't they?

You can download the addon kit here and the re-released version of her original Victorian Valentine's kit here. Don't forget to leave her some love!

If the traditional Victorian thing is a little too fussy for you with all the busyness, perhaps you'd like this great kit from Derek of the So Much To Do, So Little Time blog. Derek's kit definitely has that old vintage look too it but isn't quite as fussy. This preview only shows his elements but he's got two downloads of beautiful papers too.
You can download Derek's Vintage Valentine kit here.

Valentine's Day is the perfect time to decorate up some great romantic photos from your collections. So what are you waiting for?

Go get creative with your genealogy!

Another Place and Time: Mardi Gras

Another Mardi Gras has come and gone. Who's got pictures? If you've got pictures, I've got a great scrapbooking kit for you!

Check this out, it's a Mardi Gras blog parade. A number of digi-scrapping designers got together and created a mega kit in the traditional Mardi Gras colors, green, gold, and purple. Here's one participant's contribution to the parade. This is from Terrell's blog, Designs By Terrell S. You can find the download link here.

Don't you just love the rich colors and textures!?! You can really have some fun with this kit!

The Mardi Gras blog parade actually starts on the Moo Two Designs blog. Start there and download the first part of the mega kit. There you'll also find the link to the next participant in the parade. And the next participant will give you another free Mardi Gras kit and a link to the next participant. And so on. By the time you're done visiting and downloading from all the parade participants you'll have one great kit for your Mardi Gras pictures!

Even if you didn't attend Mardi Gras this year you can still make use of this kit. Maybe you've visited New Orleans, the home of Mardi Gras (at least in the U.S. ;-). You could use this as a theme kit for your vacation photos. Got ancestors from the New Orleans area? This would make great theme pages for family photos! If you've been to a Mardi Gras party anywhere you could also use this kit to scrap your party photos. It's very versatile. Grab it now because it won't be available indefinitely!!!

Now go get creative with your genealogy!