Follwing is a letter from Karen Foster. I asked her to share her thoughts on scrapbooking, and I am so glad I did! You can see the Ancestry Lines she mentioned at www.LDSscrap.com. Karen is our first LDS Designer in our Designer Series. We have also brought in her Christmas line to help celebrate.
"I was introduced to the scrapbook industry about 10 years ago. At the time, I was designing clip art books and rubber stamps for other companies. A friend of mine who had a small scrapbook section in her store, saw my artwork and encouraged me to create LDS themed scrapbook papers since there weren't many to choose from. I began painting missionaries, primary children and other LDS themed designs. I had them printed and they began selling. The products saturated the LDS market quickly so I began branching out into all themes I could think of that would be need in the scrapbook industry. The product lines grew and sales expanded until today they sell around the world.
A few years ago, I became interested in a theme I hadn't seen yet. I had begun researching my own ancestry and felt there was a need...for a variety of genealogy papers, stickers and a book on how to scrapbook family history documents and photos. The product were very well received, not only by the LDS audience, but everywhere. It tied scrapbooking and genealogy together in a way that hadn't been done before. Since that time, Karen Foster Design has produced three different lines of family history papers and stickers Ancestry Series (disc.) Family History for Kids and My Legacy.
People everywhere, especially women, are drawn to scrapbooking. There is a spirit in the art which is hard to explain. I believe it comes from the value scrapbookers place on relationships with loved ones and experiences they share. It provides a way to record, preserve and protect their memories with the people they love. Not only is the end result of their labors- the finished scrapbook- a treasure, but the process of creating it is of great worth because it develops talents and draws people together.
I believe the written story in a scrapbook rivals the importance of the pictures. My grandmother taught me the value of the story. For several decades she researched family history, and I helped her on several occasions. Through her, I learned to appreciate my ancestors and the legacy they gave me. I discovered that if an ancestor did not leave behind records such as letters or journals, their lives were usually reduced to a few events recorded in a parish register such as birth, marriage, and death. As I helped search for records, I felt like a detective trying to piece together a few discoveries in order to guess the story. How I wished more of them had left behind stories. My grandmother took it upon herself to write many life stories based on her genealogical research. She gave them to her grandchildren as gifts. It was through these stories that I gained a connection to my ancestors. I'm convinced that they want to be remembered.
Every scrapbook layout should be largely devoted to writing descriptions of memories, feelings, thoughts, dreams, fears, triumphs, hopes and joys. A typed story is nice: but a hand written story is even better. It doesn't need to look professionally written because children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will treasure not only the story, but the handwriting itself. Photos will mean more with a story beside them. If scrapbookers begin to view each layout as a life journal, it will help them to remember to include more stories.
I believe that people who create scrapbooks live life more fully because they know the story will be recorded. They want the scrapbook to be filled with memorable experiences of the people they love. They see how the things they do affect themselves and others. A scrapbook expands horizons and adds meaning to life because it is not only a book, but a representation of the lives of those that are special to them."
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