Scrapbook Ideas for Recording Your Family Reunions

Family reunions or large family get-togethers are important events. They can be big events, too, and present challenges when it comes time to get so many photos adn stories on the page.

See how our creative team has scrapbooked their family reunions.

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Megan Blethen says, “Singing and music has been a big part of my Grandpa’s (my Mom’s Dad) life. He is getting older and I have had family members asking me to record songs he used to sing to us. At our family reunion this summer we asked him to sing for us and I took videos and pictures to record this prescious memory.”

“Scrapbooking family reunions are hard because I take a LOT of photos! We don’t see extended family often so when we do I become an even bigger shutter bug.
With this page I wanted the photos and the story to stand out. I didn’t feel I needed a lot of products. I went with a nice black patterned paper and chose a couple accent papers to make the black and white photos pop. This is an important story to our family and I also wanted to use all of them.”

“When I make layouts for family reunions I like to choose a few stories/events that really stood out to me and make 12×12 layouts for them. The rest of the photos I will put into Pocket pages. This way it isn’t as stressful or time consuming and you can include more photos that you want to remember.”

 

Cynthia T. says, “Our family reunions are very few as we are all scattered around the world and the family is HUGE on both sides- But even in separated groups, we always manage to see most of them when we travel to South America, and it always involves food!

I don’t find scrapping our reunions difficult, as a matter of fact is one of my favorite subjects, but it often takes a long time and there is usually a need for more than one page. 

I usually try to think of variants so there is not just lines of photos, in this case, I used a paper with frames printed on it to help me arrange my photos. I started of with all photos in color, but it looked a bit overwhelming so I decided to go for black and white for most, leaving the family core: My parents, my brother , wife and children and my daughter and I in color, remembering one of the lessons in in the Get It Scrapped Membership about Emphasis and creating focal points.

 

Nicole Mackin says, “While family reunions tend to be a place and time for a lot of larger group photos, I try to focus on the smaller individual stories of the reunion as well. This page, in particular, was about how right after this photo was taken, my niece’s head got stuck!”

“A story we likely won’t forget, but one I still wanted to document. In general, reunions can be overwhelming to document because of the number of people there and the large number of photos that are taken. But by mixing individual stories like this one along with divided page protectors that house multiple photos that don’t have specific stories, it can be much less overwhelming and is a system I follow any time I have a large group of photos from an event, vacation, or in this instance, a family reunion in Colorado.”

 

Debbie Hodge says, “I make lots and lots of layouts from a family reunion. There are usually spreads of candids, spreads from specific activities like a hayride or game, and then separate layouts for each family portrait. I try to use a similar design and product for similarly-themed pages. For example, the family portraits all get a similar treatment. The candid spreads get the same treatment. And the for photos I just love, I’ll make a pretty page that doesn’t fit a formula.”

“The first layout here is the cover for my mom’s family reunion several years ago. My Dad was ill and couldn’t leave the porch so I photoshopped him into the big group portrait.”

“My mom has 5 siblings and we always get a group shot of each family.  For this album, I made a separate page for each, including the best portrait and a smaller ‘outtake’ of the group. Here are two of the six family portrait pages I made. I used a similar design and the same product for all of them.”

“I also made three spreads with this design and the exact same product for the candids of family in conversation.”