Here's the scrapbook every family historian dreams of finding: Page after page of mementos, photos and documents, preserved alongside stories that capture ancestors' personalities and family traditions. It's not just a gold mine of genealogical facts. It provides a sense of your ancestors' lives that you can't get from an old record or pedigree chart.

Even if your forebears didn't oblige, you can still have the ancestral scrapbook you wish they'd left behind — create your own heritage album. With today's archival-quality preservation products, your album will last far longer than anything your ancestors could've created. Your descendants can enjoy it for generations to come.

You'll use many scrapbooking techniques and supplies in your album. But there are some key differences between a heritage album and a regular scrapbook or memory album. Scrapbooks display your family photographs in a more friendly and fun way than just placing them in an album. Memory albums usually commemorate one special person or event, such as a wedding, birth, special vacation or major milestone. With both scrapbooks and memory albums, you can use just about any acid-free paper or embellishment to make your pages vibrant and fun. You start with bright papers, stickers and die cuts, then add some journaling.