Celebrate Your Love Of Family Through History

Anyone that knows me, knows how much I love history. As an artist, I found it easier to tell my stories through my art and my ability to craft. Mixed media, card making, scrapbooking ... it all tells a story of who we are, who the artist or crafter is.

In the art world and in the paper crafting world I've noticed a strong and sustaining trend towards vintage. Steampunk is hot right now ... but for me, as a woman of color - those themes that are so celebrated and made into cardstock and other scrapbook ephemera by some of the big names - do not reach out and grab me.

What DOES reach out and grab me, and wraps itself around my heart, are pictures of my own family. My Grandparents who were landowners and business owners in an age of racial disharmony. My Great-Aunts, who were all seamstresses by trade or by necessity, who were as stylish as the women on the big screens of their day. Women who used what they had to keep a proper home, to take care of their families ... skills that seem to be so forgotten today.

These are the people in my life that "grab me", that I think about when I see Vintage and Steampunk ... and you know what? I find a way to incorporate their memories into my memory keeping.

Go through those vintage photos and incorporate them into the background ... make your own papers out of those old photos! I've learned as an artist not to wait for someone to create something for me - to create it myself.

You can also do this in your scrapbooking. Take this month, Black History Month and celebrate not JUST history ... but your OWN history. If you check out the Premiere SOC E:Spire Ezine, you will see how I used painted tags on page 46, to highlight history ... and I give you other tips on how you can use painted history tags to highlight your own family events.