Chinese New Years Eve Celebrates Family and Ancestors

Chinese New Year or ‘Spring Festival’ is China’s most important festival and holiday. The dates changes every year and are decided by the Chinese lunar calendar, but it’s always between January 21 and February 20 of the Gregorian calendar.

Traditions and Activities

In China, Chinese New Year’s Eve is a time for families to be together. Wherever they are, people are expected to be home to celebrate the festival with their families. On New Years Eve traditions include  remembering the ancestors and giving red envelopes that contain crisp new paper money to the children and seniors in the family, and watching fireworks and firecrackers which scare off the evil spirits.

Looking at the Hung Bow Red Lanterns crafted from the red envelopes to decorate for Chinese New Years, I decided it would be a simple matter to make Red Lanterns with family and ancestor photos on them to personalize the decorations and show respect to the ancestors on Chinese New Years Eve as well as year round.

These are traditionally made by folding and stapling red envelopes.

I have modified a simple 6 panel Hung Bow Lantern by using photographs of Chinese Ancestors.

READ MORE – CLICK HERE !

How to translate Chinese Caricatures into Computer Fonts

READ MORE – THERE IS AN APP FOR THAT !!

Chinese Caricature Generators

Screenshot from the Chinesetools.eu Calligraphy Generator

CHINESE THEMED PEDIGREE CHARTS

READ MORE

I hope my tutorial has inspired you to create one of your own. Please leave any comments or questions below. I would love to hear about your genealogy crafts.

If you are interested in ordering from Amazon.com, please click on any of these ads to be directed to their site. Any purchases, while there, will give us a small bonus, at no extra cost to you. This will help fund the Genealogy-GenCrafts.com website. Thanks ~ Jackie

“Genealogy-Gencrafts.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking from/to amazon.com.”

CHINESE THEMED PEDIGREE CHARTS

The Chinese have a complicated structure as to how they address their family members and ancestors based on whether the person is from their father’s side, mothers side, whether the person is older or younger than their parent, grand parents etc.

Many Chinese individuals never know or learn their ancestors actual names because they refer to them by these names. If you have old photographs, these nomenclature may require you to determine WHO wrote the name on the back of the photo.

Chinese are more likely to display Family Charts than individual Pedigree Charts.

For more information read further explanations on Wikipedia.org (You will be leaving my site)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_kinship

When Chinese married, it was most often a prearranged marriage, and the first time the bride and groom saw each other was when she was carried from her fathers village in a sedan chair and arrived at the door of the grooms house in a sedan chair and he opened the curtain after throwing firecrackers at the sedan chair to ward off any evil spirits.

If you are VERY, VERY LUCKY your parents or grandparents may be in possession of the three generational chart that would have been exchanged by the families prior to marriage to make sure they were not to closely related.

This document (not a generational chart) explains the woman’s birth date, and birth location, presented to the grooms family to determine if the marriage will have compatability.

If you want to be able to read, understand and display the information, for your family, you may want to create your own personal Chinese Themed Pedigree Chart.

Note: I am not Chinese, and this is a “Chinese Themed Pedigree Chart”, that I painted. Not to be represented as something you would find in China.

Information that may be of interest, regarding Chinese naming patterns.

Each village had one primary family all related to each other. Everybody in the village thus had the same family name. Chinese naming traditions dictate the Family Name comes first, then the individuals name, and then (to aid in the confusion of everybody having the same family name, each generation of a particular family, all had the same (third) generational name.

EXAMPLE:

Family Name: Wong

Individual’s name: Hung

Therefore “Wong Hung Yin” and ALL of his brothers generational name was Yin. All his sisters would have the same generational name also but may not be exactly the same middle name as their brothers.

So any individual in a village whose name was Wong Something Yin, would be siblings. No question about it. And all the men whose generational name was Yin had fathers, whose generational name was the same. So you could group generations but not necessarily figure out whose son they were.

Each family had an 8 generation “Family Poem” So they knew 8 generations in advance what first letter they would use to pick the generational name for their children.

This makes grouping the male ancestor moderately accurate. Until the men get married and take a “Married” Name, unrelated to their birth name. And when they came to America they might adopt and English name.

Take into account the various accent with which they talked and how the person heard what they said, and finding ships list with the correct ancestor on the list has issues.

On the other hand, while the women had childhood names,  once they married they often took their fathers family name added “Shee” (wife of) then her husbands name. Thus a female named Chin Yuntie who married a man who was of the Leo Clan, Would become Chin Shee Leo . . . Taking into account the Chin Village was probably fairly near the Leo Village, you end up with a large number of women named Chin Shee Leo. After coming to America some Chinese women went back to there childhood name. As an example the woman above took the name  Yuntie (her childhood name), Chin (her father’s clan), Leo (her husbands family name). Yuntie Chin Leo.

Prior to the 1930 each village had an “Ancestral Hall” that housed all the generations information, however the Communist did their best to destroy all of those records to break familial ties making standard genealogy research much more difficult.

This post is still a work in progress.

Basic Red Chinese Lantern Photo Cube

Whether you make the basic Chinese Lantern or embellish yours with tassels or dragons, this photo cube is simple to put together and versatile. And if you don’t have any Chinese ancestors all you have to do is change the color scheme and embellishments and you can make this lovely “Mothers Day Tulip” shaped photo cube.

Simple lantern decorated with Dragon Heads, A Tassel and the Chinese Character for “Wong”.

For Bright Red Chinese Lantern template CLICK HERE

For Dirty Pour Chinese Lantern template CLICK HERE

For Tulip Lantern template CLICK HERE

I would recommend printing several copies at home on your printer if you have one to practice your cutting and folding.

Cut out the Chinese Lantern Template.

Fold each section of the Chinese Lantern template and press crisply.

Repeat the folding process at the bottom of the photos and press crisply.

Lay on the table and press firmly with your finger.

Gently flatten the Chinese Lantern Template.

Fold all of the Vertical lines of the template.

Pinch the vertical lines crisply.

Fold each of the glue tabs.

It is important that the fold is pinched crisply.

Use double sided tape on all of the glue tabs and the side tab. It is important that the tape cover the entire tab. Either use glue tape which I found worked best or hot glue. Trying to use contact cement was frustrating (for me) and it was next to impossible to hold position while regular craft glue set up.

ADDITIONAL STEPS INSERTED HERE

Examples Of  Various Embellishments

Chinese knots and tassels make great embellishments for the Chinese Lanterns.

More complex tassels are easy to assemble.

How I use a vintage postcard to make this custom matte for a Civil War Ancestor.

I found this vintage GAR postcard on ebay for $3 plus $1 postage

You could use the original, but I have another project in mind for it, so I scanned the card and deleted the area where the soldier was.

Then using the clone tool to keep the original color and texture, I deleted the words “To My Comrades” on the banner

I added D. McArthur on the banner in a color I picked up from the eagle.

I put the photo of David McArthur in the opening where the soldier had been.

Instead of enlarging the card to fit a 5×7″ frame, I put a matte behind the photo in the shade that was in the shadows under the banner and put a drop shadow on the card layer to make it pop. Now it is ready to print and frame.

A military tribute to your families veterans makes a memorable addition to your family history scrapbooks.

I cannot believe I passed my high school history classes. I remembered just enough to pass the test and the dates and events flew out the back side of my head faster than the chapter on the next war. Now with those date put in relationship to each generation of my ancestors, I cannot believe that my brother fought in Vietnam, my father in WWII, my grandfather got out of fighting in WWI somehow (I wish I knew the answer to that), and my great grandfather was a cook in the Civil War because of a bad back and his brother died in Andersonville Prison (a very bad place where most died of disease.

Somehow that puts war in another light. I think if they had all the students make a chart that showed which generation of their own families fought in which war, maybe they would pay more attention in class.

Even if they did not do anything heroic or get wounded, any individual who served during any conflict or war would have received a Campaign Medal or Commendation that are a colorful addition to a military collage. If the collage is for a page in a family history book and you don’t have the actual medals, photographs can be found online. If you are doing a shadow box it is possible to order replacement medals online.

A Timeline is a great way to show military service. If a person were in the Navy it is a simple process to search for the name of the ship and get photos (for personal use) and list of dates of where the ship was and the conflicts it engaged.

Fold3.com is your one stop internet site (for a fee) for millitary records, Revolutionary War through current conflicts and among other thing it has photos from “Cruse Books” from the Vietnam conflict that has unit photos and information on the various Navy ships of the era. It is a simple matter to find information on the internet regarding a given ship after you narrow down the dates your ancestor was on it.

For a fee you can get your ancestors entire military file from the National Archives online at: https://www.archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records which will list everything you need for timelines and searches for appropriate photographs if you don’t have any. If you are lucky enough to already have discharge papers or any other documentation regarding your ancestors service, there is huge amounts of data that you can find for free online to add spice and variety to your collage.

There were and are also many veterans organizations for veterans of every war, starting with Daughters of the Revolution, The GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) and currently Amvets that retain many records and photographs.

For step by step instructions on how I turned a vintage postcard into a personalized photo mount – CLICK HERE

Celebrate your Mexican ancestors with this Simple Shutter Frame Ofrenda

Perfect addition to your table top family alter.

To make the shadow box Ofrenda, I started with a Plaid brand Shutter Frame, a wooden laser cut oval frame and some packing material that came with a small hard drive.

I wanted the shutters to look like “Papal Picado” so I painted each one different tissue paper colors. I painted the shadow box black, so I painted the frame in front a contrasting bright color.

I pulled out all of my Day of the Dead themed notions.

The oval frame needed a way to float in front of the shadow box so I used hot glue to glue a couple tin flowers on the front of the frame.

I used hot glue to suspend the oval frame over the shadow box hole.

Center the oval frame in the space where the photo usually goes.

Oval frame in place.

I glued a photograph of my great grandfather onto a piece of scrap cardboard I painted black to give it a stiff support to suspend behind the oval frame. I wanted a 1/4 setback between the photo and the oval frame but it would have been simple to just hot glue or tape the photograph behind the oval frame.

I glued 4 beads onto the back of the photo to space the photo away from the back wall of the the shadow box, but keeping it 1/4″ from the oval frame.

I was happy with the placement of the photo, but I did not glue the shadow box to the back of the frame yet.

I used my assorted notions to decorate the frame.

I used a small plastic cross and glued a skull to the cross to make a candle holder. Then I melted a one inch section from the top of a gold birthday candle, using a bit of hot glue.

I had originally thought I would make tiny cut tissue paper Papel Picado for the shutters, but I found and used decorative tape to make the shutters look like Papel Picado. This was much easier and far more intricate than I would have ended up with had I followed my original plan.

I made miniature Papel Picado banners to hang across the open Ofrenda.

Side view

I had intended on tucking paper marigolds in the shadowbox behind the picture but I decided the black was much more dramatic and so I left it flat black and glued the shadow box with the photo behind the frame.

I hope my tutorial has inspired you to create one of your own. Please leave any comments or questions below. I would love to hear about your genealogy crafts. If you need any of the supplies from Amazon, please click through using the Genalogy-GenCraft affiliate links below.

If you are interested in ordering from Amazon.com, please click on any of these ads to be directed to their site. Any purchases, while there, will give us a small bonus, at no extra cost to you. This will help fund the Genealogy-GenCrafts here on the web. Thanks ~ Jackie

Supplies for this Project

<

Other “Day of the Dead” themed items you may be interested in…

“Genealogy-Gencrafts.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking from/to amazon.com.”

NOTE: I am not Tlinget. This art project is to demonstrate making a pedigree chart based on family tradition and/or art created by one of your ancestors. I am just lucky enough to have offered to help a friend with her genealogy and do a pedigree chart for her, only to find that she possessed the most fabulous tunic created by her mother.

A similar project could just as easily be done using the fabric of your mother or grandmothers apron or favorite dress and bits and scraps out of their jewelry box or junk drawer.

I sat down with my friend Julia, and started asking her all the standard questions to fill out a pedigree chart to the best of her abilities, as far as she knew so I could continue and confirm the information.

Then I asked her if she had any photographs of her parents, grandparents, etc and she produced this incredible portrait of her parents.

Rachel “Dixie” Johnson and Peter Charles Johnson Sr.

I commented how cool it would have been if the photo were in color and she said she owned the tunic that her mother was wearing in the picture.

Front of Julia’s mother’s tunic

Back of Julia’s mother’s tunic

I set to work taking lots of photographs with my iphone of all the detailing as well as a large solid area of felt on the back. Here are only a few of them.

Bead work on tunic

Bead work and fringe on tunic

Large solid area of felt on back of tunic

Button boarder on sides of tunic

First I made color swatches from the photos of Julia’s mother’s tunic

One of the first things I did was replicate sections of the bead work and make Julia some scrapbooking paper using the colors and textures found in the tunic

Using Photoshop filters I made more abstract digital scrapbooking papers based on the bead work and colors found on the tunic made by Julia’s mother.

Using a traditional Tlinget Button Blanket shape, I copied buttons and beads off of the tunic to make a simple Pedigree Chart for Julia using the digital scrapbook papers I made in Photoshop using the colors and textures from her mothers tunic.

But the project that exploded in my mind when I first saw the tunic was this chart, using more of the elements from the tunic. The felt from the tunic, the fringe on the bottom with the button borders, the beaded flowers, and the beaded eagle head.

Every element on this artwork, turned pedigree chart, was created by Julia’s mother, Rachel “Dixie” Johnson, I just rearranged it and included the portrait that led me down the path to this finished product.

I did the entire project using digital images in Photoshop. There was no fabric, bead work or eagles, damaged to create this artwork.

Final artwork designed using elements of fabric and bead work from Julia’s mother’s tunic.

I hope this inspires you to create a pedigree chart that jumps out of the frame instead of the same old, same old, chart they have been photocopying down the ages.

Get Inspired !

Jackie Whedbee-Mattingly

The bead work designs above were created by Peter Charles Johnson Sr and executed by Rachel “Dixie” Johnson. I received permission to put the photographs on this post, and to do the pedigree charts. Please respect their creative copywrite and mine and do not reproduce without written permission. © 2017 Genealogy-Gencrafts.com

When you are lucky enough to have photographs of multiple generations you need to show them off in ways that get the most mileage.

And Coffee Cups often fit the bill.

Unlike whipping out your smart phone to show your latest selfies to people who don’t care, having your family photos on your coffee cups inspire people interested in genealogy to perk up and ask questions. Or not.

This cup shows photos of my sisters grand children, her daughter, her, our mother, our mothers mother, and her mother . . . and her mother . . . . .

Some layouts are handy because at a certain point you can swap out the younger generations and use the same design for sisters and cousins like I did here.

Susan’s Mothers Day, Coffee Cup

Noma’s Mothers Day Coffee Cup

The first layout being my sister’s cup and the second cup being for a cousin. I had to change out their moms, them and their children and grandchildren, but the grandmothers, great grandmothers and great great grandmothers remained the same.

Mothers, Mothers, Mother

Since I had one printed and mailed and the other cup was printed locally I had to change the dimensions. This is something you have to be careful about. Even between cups from the same company the dimensions are different for 11 oz cups vs 15 oz cups etc.

Tin Ornament with the photograph of John L Whedbee Sr and his grandson Charles in approximately 1930, in Arkansas.

Creating Beautiful Vintage Looking Ornaments

Supplies Needed:

• Tin Ornament
• Mod Podge
• Paint Brush
• Photo Printed on LASER PRINTER
• Desired Embellishments

Coat Tin with a generous layer of Matte Mod Podge

Carefully place photo or art, toner side down onto the tin.

Starting at the center, gently press the paper against the tin, working out wrinkles and excess Mod Podge.

Press out from the center until it is as smooth as possible.

Once you have pressed out the wrinkles to the best of your abilities, set the ornament aside for 3 to 4 hours or overnight to dry. The longer the better.

After the ornament is completely dry submerge in water for about 30 seconds.

After 30 seconds gently rub the paper, if it starts rolling off, continue gently rubbing, if it does not dip back in water for a few seconds at a time until it does start rolling off.

Rub the paper away.

Dip back in the water.

Continue Rubbing the paper away.

You are going to want to get all of the paper to rub away, just keep dipping and rubbing, this takes patience.

When you have rubbed all of the paper away let it dry. if you see any paper fibers left you can use wet fingers to get the last of the fibers to roll away.

I decided to slightly color the photograph with pearlescent watercolors.

I painted a little peach on the skin, blue on the shirt and green in the trees.

After I was happy with the color I dabbed another layer of Mod Podge over the entire ornament, dabbing instead of brushing so I did not move the watercolor paint around. Then I sprinkled on some gold Mica Chips and glitter to sparkle it up a bit.

I tied a piece of ribbon around the top of the ornament and it was ready for the tree.

Other Examples

Paul Benton Hoyt and his first wife Amelia Long

Albert Mattingly, husband of Louise Catherine Ryan

.

Make the most of grandmothers cookie cutters or make new family treasures from thrift store finds !

Tools and Supplies

Tools:

• Drill to put a hole in the top of the cookie cutter. You could use a nail and hammer.
• Block of wood to drill into
• Scissors
• Hot Glue Gun and Glue

Supplies

• Cookie Cutters
• Photo Prints
• Pen and Paper
• Glue squares
• Jump Ring and Ribbon to hang the ornament, options below.
• 3 dimentional paint, I used a glitter color on this ornament, works as both glue and grout to cover any mistakes. Tin cookie cutters I use a pewter color that looks good with the silver cookie cutter.
• Whatever Embellishments you desire

Trace around your cookie Cutters and then scan the page so you can use it for sizing your photographs to make them the perfect size. If that is to complicated, get 4 x 6 prints of your photos and pick a cookie cutter to fit the picture instead of the other way around.

I used the scan of the cookie cutters as the bottom layer in Photoshop and made sure the pictures I wanted for the cookie cutter ornaments fit. Then I sent one 8×10 print to have a matte print made. Glossy printes end up with fingerprints on them. The final print I was able to make 9 cookie cutter ornaments.

Make sure your photos fit the cookie cutters by making a print at home before sending to get a photo quality print.

Drilled a small hole in the top of the cookie cutter to put a ribbon through. You could also epoxy a loop of some sort to hang from or tie a ribbon to.

Hold the cookie cutter behind the photo to get perfect placement.

Trace around the cookie cutter

Since the sides of this cookie cutter are tapered, i drew a second line 1/8 of an inch smaller than the outside so the picture would be perfectly positioned.

Make sure your photo fits perfectly.

This was a very shallow cookie cutter so I only used the 1/4″ x 14″ mounting squares.

Place the mounting squares all the way around the cookie cutter.

Once you get the mounting squares in, but before you put the picture it you must install the ribbon hanger. I tied the ribbon securely to a jump ring.

I put the ribbon down through the hole I drilled at the top of the tree and then hot glued the ribbon to the back of the cookie cutter.

Place the photo in the cookie cutter where it sets nicely on the mounting squares.

Make sure it fits perfectly.

Put a tiny amount of glitter glue or 3 dimensional paint on the edges of the mounting squares to adhere the photo to. You could also use any simple paper glue.

Put your photo in position and run another line of glitter glue around the edge of the cookie cutter and embellish as you please.

The tiny Christmas lite strand make this tree even more festive !

A grand way to pass down the family recipes are to turn them into practical kitchen artifacts.

When I was a child, I thought “salad dressing” was this recipe. The recipe was on a 3 x 5 card in my moms recipe box, it said “Lois’s French Dressing” at the top of the card. I was a teenager before I learned there were other kinds.  And not being a fan of salad in general, I did not think much about it over the years unless I was in a situation that I had a plate of lettuce put in front of me. When my mother passed away one of my disappointments was that this recipe was no longer in the recipe box.

When I decided to do a post about handing down recipe’s I was reminded of this tangy memory of my aunt Lois and I called my sister and asked her if she could go through moms recipe boxes and look again for me, to no avail. I even contacted Lois’s daughter.

You were almost reading a post about the worlds best pecan pie, made out of walnuts, but that is a long story in itself.

You have to consider the fact that I have moved several times over the years since mom passed away, and to my knowledge I have never had a copy of the recipe. About 2 weeks ago I moved a box in my dining room and a piece of paper fell out. While I do believe in miracles I doubt that they get wasted on salad dressing recipe’s, but there it was. A very old xerox copy . . . Aunt Lois’s French Dressing . .

Pecan Pie will be on a dish towel. . .

Step One – Design your Pot Holder in your choice of layout programs and print the design on some cotton fabric with a laser printer or write out the recipe directly onto fabric with a waterproof pen.

8″ x 8″ is a practical size.

I made a salad and poured on the dressing, and took a photo and printed it, to put on the back side of the pot holder. You could do similar or use any cotton fabric of your choice. Maybe even use some fabric from a heavy cotton item belonging to the recipe owner?

Step 2 – Assemble your pot holder. You will need some padding. I used 2 layers of an older towel but you could purchase some fusible fleece for padding. I have not sewn in years so I sprayed the back sides of the front and back fabric with some spray basting. A shot to both pieces of towel and stacked them appropriately. Then used some 3/8″ heat bond to iron on the hem tape. In the top left corner I added a loop to hang the pot holder.

Step 3 – Embellish. Depending on how durable you want your pot holder to be you should either use a sewing machine to secure the pot holder together or do as I did and use a blanket stitch to go around the edges.

The perfect gift for children moving away from home !

Whether you choose to make this simple and inexpensive version of my creative Headstone Necklace . . . . with typed data. . .

Or this version, with actual headstone rubbings reduced down to a fraction of their original size, with extra embellishments and photos. . . . Either one is made more special by the information being from your own ancestors !

Supplies you are going to need for the headstones are:

• Paper and or towel to protect your work surface
• Small wooden tags (half again more than the number of headstones you need)
• Pens and Acrylic Paint to color headstone
• Print of the information you want of the headstones
• Mod Podge
• 2 chains – plastic or metal
• connectors or jump rings and extra links of chain

Tools you will use.

• Soft Paint Brush
• Bowl of water
• Jewelers pliers.

Making Your Headstones –

You need to pick small wooden tags available in most craft and many department stores with the hole already drilled, or find tiny headstone shaped wood blanks (available during Halloween craft season) that you will need to drill later on. The small wooden tags come in a reasonable variety of shapes. I would recommend doing several extra in case you are not happy with the results of a given headstone you can do it over.

For the Mod Podge to work properly you need to have at least a basic layer of paint or primer on the wood. . . What I did was start by saturating the wood with water on a soft bristle paint brush.

You can paint your headstones any way that suits you. . . I outlined each headstone with a Gelly Roll pen which is water-soluble and has a ink which was a lot faster than a layer of paint since I did not just want plain white or grey headstones.

However you choose to paint your headstones, do all of them the same way, here I put red on top left, purple bottom left, blue top right and green bottom right. . . some a little more, some a little less, but primarily the same.

The ink on each little headstone bled from the water, and I exaggerated this action by adding more water and swirling the brush around immediately after I inked up each one.

I wiped each piece with a piece of tissue. . . rubbing the center a little extra to stop the bleeding of color, and let them dry.

To lighten the center a little more I swirled a watered down brush with just a little antique white acrylic paint on each headstone to lighten up the center. The color bled up through the wet acrylic paint.

Color added some fun to my headstones, but I believe grey would look more spooky for Halloween. . . . The more unique your color scheme, the more extra headstone you should paint.

Type the information you want on your headstones to fit and then flip your print when you print the information.

Cut to fit your headstones

Put a nice layer of Mod Podge on your print.

Center your prints on each headstone.

Use an outdated credit card to smooth any air bubbles under the paper. Don’t get any Mod Podge on top of the paper if you can help it.

Toss 2 headstones in a bowl of water. As you pull one of the headstones out of the water put another one in so they get a head start wetting the paper good. . . you should be working fast enough that they should not be in the water more than a couple of minutes each.

As you pick each headstone out of the water soak, rub it with your thumb, and the paper will roll right off. . . rub in all directions.

Get all the paper off but don’t rub so hard the type comes up.

This is where you start mumbling about needing to have painted more blanks.

Even after the headstone dries you can re-wet and rub off remaining paper.

After all the paper is up dry with a soft cloth.

Here are the headstones of Susanna Fields Whedbee, William T. Whedbee and all of their children.

After the headstones have dried, you can put a 1/8″ hole in each one with a drill, if the wooden blank does not already have a hole in it. . . I don’t drill the headstones before this because the paint goes on easier, the Mod Podge does not build up in the hole and until now you don’t even know that you are going to be happy with each individual headstone.

Assembling the Necklace –

For this low budget version I used 2 packages of plastic chains and 1 package of connectors (total $3).

Cut off 2 or more inches of one of the 2 chains so your headstones have plenty of room to hang.

Connect one end of both chains together.

Connect the other ends.

If you want to add a center photo to the simple necklace you can do it using the same method that you used to put the words on the headstones. Here I put a photo of Susanna on a wooden tag that I had prepared with the same colors as the headstones. I then doodled around her picture with gold and silver metallic markers and black fine line Sharpie.

The plastic connectors do not require any tools to connect to the plastic chains.

I found the little headstones hung from the chains much better if there was an extra link and jump ring connector between the chain and the headstone.

Hints –

You are going to want to lay out the necklace chains and figure out where you want your little headstones before you put them on the chains, but don’t be surprised if you have to adjust them once you try it on.

Add extra embellishments to make your “cemetery” more interesting

Finished Simple Headstone Necklace –

Advanced Headstone Necklace –

Three comments and I will do a tutorial on making this necklace.

Hope You have a creatively blessed day !

Jackie Whedbee-Mattingly

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Halloween is upon us !

The thoughts of cemeteries and photos of dead relatives are at hands reach for most genealogist so why not take advantage of our genealogy files to create fun and classy Halloween Jewelry that we can identify with!

This is a project that can be done in one afternoon if you have a craft store that carries Tim Holtz scrapbooking accessories near by, or with Amazon Prime you can get ready for next year early.

SUPPLIES –

Here are the supplies you need: A) Photo B) Chain, either bulk or one ready made chain that will go over your head and a second 4 inches longer C) Glue that is photo safe but strong enough to hold embellishments D) Photo frame, here I am using a round frame that the picture is 1 1/8′ with the frame wide enough to hold spiders E) 4 very small red rhinestones F) Jim Holtz spider embellishments G) Eye Pin long enough to hold the word you are going to spell.

TOOLS –

Here are the tools you might use: A) Small scissors B) Jewelry Pliers C) Tweezers D) Tooth pick E) Pen F) End Cutters.

PRINT –

If you are going to print your photo instead of using a commercially processed print, I would recommend White Metallic Cardstock. It gives the print an unusual sparkle that makes old photos look great.

ASSEMBLY OF PENDANT –

Measure the area that the picture needs to fit or use the template that comes with many frames.

Trace around template

Cut out the photo

Put a small amount of adhesive in frame and spread it out very thin.

Carefully place photo in frame

If your frame came with a plastic or glass bevel you can put it on now or you may desire to use Ice Resin or another three dimensional sealer if you want your pendant to have a more finished appearance. BEWARE you need to do a test on a scrap piece of the picture before you use any type of paper sealer, decoupage or crackle finish to make sure it will not blur or pull up the finish of the picture. This comes from experience. Not all finishes work on all photo paper !

Use a tooth pick and put a dot of glue where you want your first gem to go.

Place the gem.

Continue embellishing the frame with your gems.

Prepare to embellish pendant.

Your going to have to remove the ring from the spider.

The end cutters are good to remove the ring from the spider.

If the end cutters do not leave a clean cut, the jewelry pliers can be used to nibble off any bits remaining.

Look Ma . . . clean bottom : )

Put a dab of glue on the frame for your spider.

Put spider in position.

The second spider will look best if it is symmetrical in placement as possible.

At this point you have multiple options. Follow my directions or use the finished pendant any way you can imagine.

ATTACHING PENDENT TO CHAIN –

If you are cutting the chain yourself and don’t want to use a clasp measure one chain that will go over your head. Cut another chain 4″ longer than the first if you have not purchased 2 ready made chains (one 4 inches longer that the first),

Spread the link from one end of the longest chain and slide it into loop on the frame.

Repeat for the other end of the long chain.

ASSEMBLING THE NAME CHAIN –

Connect an eye pin that is long enough hold the name you want to spell onto one end of the shorter chain.

Crimp the eye pin to the chain.

Slide the letter beads onto the eye pin.

Cut the eye pin, 1/4″ longer than the name and make a loop that you can connect to the other end of the short chain.

I counted 6 links out from both ends of the name and placed a spider embellishment to the chain using a spare link left over when I cut my chains to length. Alternately a jump ring of the same color as the chain could be used. Then I counted another 8 links out in both directions and connected another pair of spiders. Depending on the size of the links on your chain

Name chain with 4 spider embellishment.

I opened the center back link of the pendant chain and connected it to the name chain so they would always remain centered together. Here is the completed necklace featuring my Great Grandfather as a young man. Just in time for Halloween !

Hope you have a Happy Halloween

Jackie Mattingly

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Aunt Mary turned 90 and had a birthday party in August.

I made her 6 of the 6 sided photo cubes which were lightweight enough to hang from the wire armatures of a balloon weight.

Each cube was different so we were able to display 36 photos on what became a table centerpiece at the party.

The instructions for making the 6 sided cubes are at my previous post “How to make 6 sided photo cube” Click HERE

This may be one of my favorite, quick, go-to gift projects of all time. I keep a half dozen of the photo bracelet kits in the craft drawer in the event I need a quick gift, especially when a relative shows up unexpected during the holidays. I can excuse myself and go resize a half dozen pictures, print them and have the project done before anybody knows I am gone. The bracelets make great presents for grandmothers when you include all of the grandchildren. The photo selection is only limited by your imagination.

There are a number of photo frame kits available with different numbers of frames including square, round, and charm frames.

There are Amazon.com links at the bottom of this post to go directly to several choices. There are numerous styles but they all assemble about the same.

Photo Heritage Bracelet

The intent of this post is to show you the simplest version possible with no additional embellishments or bling. If you are a creative person there are endless ways to embellish the bracelets

The first step is to choose and size your photographs. The photo bracelet kits come with templates and dimensions so you can size the photos properly.

You lay this template over the photo and if it fits a particular whole you know how much you have to reduce that photo. Or you can just size it to fit the 100% hole.

I chose a simple 6 frame bracelet that already has several beads between each frame, to include photos of myself, my mother, her mother (my grandmother), her mother (my great grandmother) her mother (my 2x great grandmother), her mother (my 3x great grandmother) and her mother (my 4 times great grandmother). I feel very fortunate to have portraits of 6 generations including myself of my matriarchal line.

The first step after having your photos sized to fit the template and either printing them on high quality photo paper or having prints made at your favorite photo developer is to take the paper clip or tooth pick and gently press the back of the sample photos and press them and the plastic photo protector out of the frame.

Cut out your chosen photographs.

You can see here that my photos were a tiny bit to large. Use the little plastic cover to size your photos and trim off any additional image necessary.

Slide in the bottom of the photo.

Bend the photo enough to get the top of the photo to slip into the top of the frame.

Then put the plastic cover over the photos in the same manor.

Repeat these procedures until all of the frames have photographs.

If you need additional frames you may need to buy an extra bracelet and take your bracelets apart and restring them with the required number of frames.

I have taken the above style of bracelet apart and put more colorful glass beads between the frames and I have taken the bracelet apart, added another frame and left the beads out so that the bracelet was still the correct size.

This project is moderately simple to complete once you get your photos sized and printed.

You can change the photos as often as you choose, whether you are finding additional photos of your ancestors or the grandchildren are growing up.

Please remember that clicking on the link below does not cost you any extra but does help me pay the expenses of this blog. If you decide to go back later to purchase please come and click through from the log. It also helps me know if people are enjoying and doing the projects.

Panorama Egg Display featuring eggs with photographs of Ancestors and Family

Eggs have been traditional decorations of spring, Easter in particular, for centuries  but don’t let that limit your imagination.  The egg shape is an elegant design, and these panorama eggs can be displayed as a single ornament, included in flower arrangements or even hung as Christmas tree ornaments.

Consider the pictures when you decide how to embellish the eggs. This tree includes my parents and ancestors, so I went with lacy trim and delicate silk and plastic flowers. But it would be easy to make a more modern set of eggs with a more Dr Suess feel, or Funky or maybe use sea shells instead of flowers and have it commemorate a family trip to the ocean and make a driftwood pile to glue them to.

So grab a beverage and contemplate how you would modify these little gems to represent your life and family…

The supply list is at the bottom of the post.

A small shot glass makes it easy to imagine the exact positioning you want the opening to be to be. A compass can be used also.
Draw around the glass with a marker.

Carefully cut out the opening of the egg

To hang the eggs I have used a 6mm Jump Ring and an Eye pin.
There are multiple other ways you could use to hang the eggs, but this method looks very nice

Cut the eye pin to about an inch.
Use a sharp tool to put a hole in the top of the egg

Push the eye pin through the plastic eggs

After pushing the eye pin through the egg use a small needle nose pliers to bend a knot so it will not pull out

Carefully cut around your photograph

You are going to need to take a CLEAN steal wool and rough up the inside of the egg so that the hot glue will stick

The small flowers in the egg are multi-purpose.
First, They should look nice and be appropriate colors to go with your pictures.
Additionally the flowers are used to help position the photos.

After making sure the photograph fits in the egg to your satisfaction run some hot glue around the bottom and place in the egg.
Using your pokey tool (I know that is a technical description) position the photo where it is standing up straight and hold till the glue gets cold.

Once the photo is in place you may decide you need additional flowers behind the pictures, now is the time to make sure you are happy.
After you decide what a nice small item to put in front of the photo is (Does not necessarily have to be a flower) put a bit of hot glue in front of the picture

Press a small flower or flowers into the hot glue in front of the picture. this serves to cover the bottom edge of the photo as well as adding another element.

Using a hot glue gun start putting the trim around the outside of the opening.
It usually (but not always) looks better to have the trim extend beyond the egg just a little bit.
Slowly go around the egg placing the trim. Do not use any more hot glue than you absolutely have to.

As you are coming around the egg with the trim consider stretching the trim or giving it some ease so that the trim meets in a pleasing way.
If you started at exactly the center and end at exactly the center and the trim does not frey it should not matter.
If it does not work out quite right you can either consider where you are going to display/hang it. Does it really matter? Or for those picky among us . . .consider a flower or other embellishment.

It looks real nice, but is not necessary to put a complimentary bit of lace around the egg also.
Make sure the trim around the back tucks under the trim in the front.

Finished Egg featuring the wedding photo of Jackie Whedbee and Larry Mattingly

Finished Panorama Egg Tree featuring photographs of the family and Ancestors of Jackie Whhedbee-Mattingly

Your supplies will include:

• Eggs, here I used the soft plastic eggs that are just soft enough to cut with an craft knife.
• A Pen, for drawing the opening of the egg.
• Shot glass or compass to make circle for opening on egg.
• Craft knife for cutting hole in front of egg.
• Pokey thing . . ok . . It is actually called a “weeder” by Circut (see why I call it the pokey tool) or a multi purpose pick.
• Eye Pin and Jump Ring to hang the egg from. Ribbon or other hanger may be used.
• A pair of manicure or embroidery scissors suitable of cutting tiny details of photograph.
• Small need nose craft pliers.
• Hot Glue gun and glue sticks.
• Selection of tiny silk flowers or other small flowers, items of bling, The smaller the better.
• Trim. It is possible to buy selections of small color coordinated trim at craft stores. you will need less than 6″ per egg.
• An Ornament Hanger to display the finished egg.

Mother’s Day Coffee Cup displaying pedigree and pictures of all the women ancestors

There are so many places that will print your favorite photo jpeg onto a cup there is no excuse not to display your genealogy and admire your photo collection.

One Mothers Day I made a pedigree chart with my sister and I at the bottom. And included one photo each of ourselves, our mother, our grandmothers on both sides, as well as a picture of my mothers grandmother and great grandmother.

I had 3 cups made . . . one for myself, one for my sister and one for myself, for Mother’s Day. They are a fabulous reminder of the women in our family tree.

 

DIY Paper Photo Cube Ornament

Paper photo cubes are easy to do and are so light weight you can hang them almost anywhere !

In todays world of selfies and digital files being thrown away to make room for more it is a great way to prolong the memories of the good times. . . . and or enjoy photos scanned from the photo albums currently collecting dust in the closet.

They are great to use for everything from adding to floral arrangements at family reunions to hanging from the coffee cup holder in the kitchen.

Not to mention the beginning of a family tradition of each person picking their 6 favorite pictures of themselves for the family Christmas tree ornament collection.

Whether you are using vintage family photos or the latest selfies out of your cell phones the hardest part is picking your favorite 6 pictures. After that you do need a photo editing program to use the following directions.

I recommend reading all the directions before diving in.

• Open and Print Tips for Laying Out/Designing Your Photo Cube.

• Click image for full sized PDF
• Select 6 pictures that will crop well and fit the theme of your cube.
• For each picture you will rotate the photo 45% if possible.
• Crop it to 2.3″ @ 300 dpi
• Open New and Improved Template

Click on Image of New and Improved Genealogy-Gencrafts Cube Template for Free Printable Template

• With the “Tips for Laying Out/Designing Your Photo Cube close” at hand, depending on whether you are using photoshop or a different photo editing software, place the photos in the direction shown on the Tip Sheet.
• The Cube looks best when the majority of photos have been rotated 45 degrees before cropping to 2.3″. However sometimes the subjects in the photo makes this impossible. Try different placements, refer to Tip Sheet for direction to place pictures and print your cube on standard paper before you commit to expensive paper or sending file to a photo processor.

• Once you get the cube art done to your satisfaction and printed it on standard paper, cut it out and fold it to make sure everything falls where you wanted and or expected it to. At this point you can print it on a heavy weight satin photo paper or have it printed to an 8×10 at your favorite photo processor. A Satin or Luster finish works much better than gloss because finger prints will show less.
• Then you need to figure out how to hang your cube. For this example I simple ran a ribbon through a button and tied a knot so it would not pull out if somebody pulled on it.

• Cut out around your cube art

• If you have a 1/8 in paper punch you can punch a small hole where the ribbon comes out through the cube.

• Fold all the panels and tabs.
• If you are going to use rubber cement as I am here you have to put some rubber cement on the back side of the paper where you will be pressing the flaps that have glue on the front side of the paper. As well as gluing the front of the flaps. Let the rubber cement/contact cement dry until it is tacky.
• Hot glue applied sparingly works the best to assemble the cubes.

• Before you start assembling your cube put the ribbon/button in the corner it belongs. Refer to tip sheet. Glue tab 1 first. Tab 2 next. Followed by tab 3.

• Glue Tabs 5, 6 and 7 all at the same time.
• Gluing in this order is the most efficient.

 

 

Panorama Easter Eggs Family Tree

The Egg is such a perfect shape. Optically it is heavier on the bottom. Has room to decorate inside and out and whether you plan on using real eggs or plastic are readily available. They are light weight and can be stored easily in a commercial egg carton.

For complete directions on making your own family tree panorama eggs, click here.