Digital Hertiage Albums: Creating a Cover

Creating the opening page for a family history album sets the stage for what the content of the heritage scrapbook will be about. Whether you create the page first or after the content is composed, the key is to make the cover invite a reader into the book.

I thought it would be beneficial for you to see the process I go through to create a cover page. This heritage album will be an ancestor album for my great aunt Elizabeth Smith. An ancestor album would be one that focused on all the Ancestors of a particular individual. It would include family trees, timeline, and biographies of each of Elizabeth's ancestors until I reach the farthest person on her family tree. This project would vary in length depending upon how many ancestors I knew about for Elizabeth.

The cover page would need to include:

• “Ancestors of Elizabeth Smith” name as a title.
• An appropriate subtitle would include her geographic location and her birth and death date.
• And a photo

This is such a nice photo and would work nicely for the album.

 With these items in mind, I can begin the process of finding an appropriate template. Searching for single photo scrapbook turns up a lot of options. However, I have a reserve of templates to draw from as well. As you'll see, I found many options.

Template Name: Tracy
I'd love to give credit for this template once
I remember who created it.

I don't rule out layouts that include more than one photos. This one called Tracey. I can see myself, taking out the tilted photo and enlarging the photo on the right. I would use the short ribbon strips on the side for location information. Since this is a cover page, I could go a little heavy on the embellishments. The title and subtitle locations are placed nicely and will work for my needs. And there is even more places for additional digital scrapbook papers and embellishments.

The more I look at this and look at Elizabeth's picture, the more I'm leaning for lesson busy embellishments. Too much digital product would take away from her elegance. So, I'll look at another template.

Scrapbook Page Sketch 027, Scrapbooksetc.com

I found this sample in the Single Photo Scrapbook Page Sketches gallery on the Scrapbooksetc.com. I like the larger picture element. Perhaps I could make this work and take out some of the embellishments, but I am going to keep looking.

Scrapbook Page Sketch 108, Scrapbooksetc.com

Here is another template from the same gallery.I like the large picture spot. I would consider actually merging the white box next to the 4x6 spot with the 4x6 photo spot. There is not too many embellishments to detract from Elizabeth's picture. This is definitely one to consider.

Template Name: AngelI'd love to give credit for this template once
I remember who created it.

I saved this template to my computer a long time ago but have forgotten where it came fom. It has potential. I could make the big title say Elizabeth. Then I could use the addition title space for the remainder of the book's identification information. I would delete the upper text box entirely. And, I would transform the picture box to a portrait orientation to accommodate the vertical picture that I have. It has potential, but I don't think it's as strong as the one above. I'll keep looking.

Template Title: January 24, 2010

I found another template. This one is heavy on the embellishments. I could scale the embellishments down and increase the size of the portrait oriented picture. This would work nicely for a heritage album cover page. I'd have to figure out my own placement for the title, but as the embellishments scale down, room for the title would certainly be available.

Becky Higgins Sketch with my elements in place

Okay, time for the 'standard' in scrapbooking Becky Higgins Sketches. I love Becky's sketches so much that I keep going back to her books again and again. I've even played around with this layout a bit. I love the simplicity of it. I can add more embellishments as necessary. However, I felt that I did want to have a little more pizzazz.

Template 9
No Reimer Reason

Now it's time to visit one of my favorite template designers No Reimer Reason. Catchy name. I found an elegant cover page template with a little pizzazz. Just enough but not to distracting. I love the circular photograph placement. Since this is a digital scrapbook, I can make a circular photo without damaging my priceless heirloom original photograph. Got to love that. Now, I'm again going to employ the adapt to fit my own needs trick of scrapbooking. Sure this template works for four photos. But who says I can't just put in one? No one. So... here's what I came up with.

As you can see I tweaked the layout to fit my needs. It still closely resembles the initial template but I made it fit the needs of my family history album. It's simple, yet elegant. You can't help but focus on the gorgeous photo of Elizabeth.

I hope my process of creating a Heritage Album Cover Page was helpful. Whether you create the cover page at the start of  your creative journey or at the end, take time to make a cover page for your family history album that invites a reader in with eager anticipation.