Sharing Your Genealogy In A New Way – Part One

(Your grandchildren may thank you)

(check out Part Two HERE)

I don’t know how often I’ve heard someone say they wished they would have asked their grandparents and even their parents more questions about their family history.

I’m a grandmother, mother, and auntie, so I thought, why don’t I create something so that future generations won’t have those regrets? I can create something they can keep, and then it will be there for them when they are ready.

For this idea and next week’s blog, I’ll give you step-by-step instructions for creating something you can share with your family that might help your grandchildren in the future.

Some ideas may require a bit of prep, but it doesn’t take that long. All these ideas are done using FOREVER and include some innovations you might not have thought of.

Idea #1 – Ancestor Cards

Why not create ancestor cards that you can give to your children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. You can even give them to your cousin’s children. Create your Ancestor cards, putting together all the information you have discovered. Try to think of the questions you should have asked your grandparents.

If you run out of room on your card, then you can provide the important stats on the back and then with a FOREVER QR code you can link the card to your account and the QR code will take them directly into either a PDF document or another file that you have prepared or to the album you have created for that person. This works perfectly if you are Saving Your Genealogy FOREVER like I am.

Read to the bottom because there is another idea for recipes. 

This idea works better if you have several grandchildren, children and nieces and nephews to send to because the smallest number of cards you can create is 10.

First, go to Create & Print>Design & Print > Cards. I chose to filter by the option to have only one photo, but you could use more. Then I chose upload your design. Next, you will choose the orientation of the design and the number of cards you’d like to make.

To add a photo, you have to have it on your computer, or ideally, I think you should have them uploaded to FOREVER. It is easy to find my photos because I tag them with the people’s names as I add them.

Once the photos are added, you can do some things to enhance the images. You can enlarge, rotate, flip, replace, filter or remove. Most of the time, I only use the Filters, where I can auto-fix, make the photo black and white or fix red eye.

Now we go to the back, and you choose how you’d like it to look. You can see you have quite a few options. I chose Greeting + letter. Replacing the greeting with the ancestor name and the letter is where I wrote the information about my great grandmother, Ellen Middlebrough nee Aindow.

You’ll notice on the photo of the back that I’ve shown above that I have a red arrow. This is where you can add a QR code.

Adding a QR requires a bit more prep. At this point, you may need to create something you want to share if you don’t have one already made, and you’ll have to store it in your FOREVER account. (Remember if you want QR codes to be saved FOREVER, you’ll need to have a paid account so if you don’t want to do that and just want to create the cards then don’t add a QR code)

Your QR code can be an audio recording, a video, or a story you have saved as a PDF. Audios could be of the ancestor speaking or singing, or you could create an audio recording of a story you’d like to share of the person you are writing about. Videos could be old home movies that you have stored in your account. Or the QR code could take you to the album you’ve created for that ancestor if you are Saving Your Genealogy FOREVER. (click the link to learn more).

Once you have the item in your account that you want to add to your card, you are all set. Well there is just one more thing you have to do, and it depends on if you are going to add a QR of a single item or whether you’re adding a QR of an album.

If it is for a single item then when you have the item in your FOREVER account you’ll see at the top of that item a SHARE button. If you click it, you will see a URL and a QR code. Save the QR code to your computer and now your ready.

So getting back to that red arrow in the photo above of the back of the Ancestor Card. When you click the QR code on the Ancestor Card you are creating, it will ask you if you want to go to your computer or an album. You can either grab it from your computer or if you choose an album, then it will automatically link to the album that you have for that ancestor. Because I have a paid account, I know that my cards, photos, videos, audio, and QR codes will be preserved for my lifetime plus 100 years.

Now it’s on to envelopes. You can now upload addresses to your account, which will be printed on your envelopes for a small upcharge. Or you can choose to write them yourself. But it would be neat to send them out to your grandchildren as you create them or alternatively create all of the ancestor cards you are going to and then gift them at one time.

Idea #1 Modification

If you don’t want to create ancestor cards why not create ancestor recipe cards? You could choose photos front and back so that you could have a picture of the dish with a photo of the ancestor’s handwritten recipe.

So that’s my idea. What do you think?

Your children or grandchildren might not be interested right now, but hopefully, they will keep the cards, and then when they are thinking, “why didn’t I ask more questions?” perhaps they’ll remember these cards and realize you already told them some of the answers.

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I’m a FOREVER Senior Ambassador, so if you sign up for an account through my links, I’ll help you with your projects. All you have to do is ask.  😊