Learn how to make family tree posters and more


Last night’s MyCanvas webinar, “Creative Gift Ideas for Moms, Dads & Grads,” included step-by-step demonstrations for creating family tree posters, photo family tree posters, photo books and graduation posters. If you missed the live presentation, you can view the archived version at your convenience.

The first half of the presentation covers family history products (family tree posters and photo family tree posters), while the second half focuses on more contemporary gift products. So if you’re only interested in family history products, you may just want to watch the first half hour. On the other hand, if you’re working on a family history book (or thinking about starting one), you’ll probably find it worthwhile to watch the photo book demo, since all of the tools and features covered in that segment are equally applicable to family history books.

Many thanks to our very engaged audience for submitting some great questions for the Q&A.

Our next MyCanvas webinar, scheduled for June 24, will focus on helping you get ready for your next family reunion. We’ll present two new products that will be released just in time for reunion season: a family reunion book and a descendant family tree poster. We’ll also show you some collaboration tools that will make it easier to get other family members involved in your efforts to publish your family history. So if you’re one of those super-organized people who plans your calendar two months ahead, I hope you’ll save the date and plan to join us.

About Stefanie Condie

Stefanie holds masters degrees in business and journalism from Columbia University. In her current role, she promotes new content to help Ancestry.com members discover their family stories and understand the historical context of their ancestors' lives.

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April 9th, 2009
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Kay
Posted on:
April 9, 2009 at 12:11 pm

I did a family calendar for Christmas 2008 and everyone LOVED it. I will want to do it again for Christmas 2009. Will I have to reenter all my dates again or will I be able to transfer them to a 2010 calendar??

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
Stefanie Condie, Ancestry.com
Posted on:
April 9, 2009 at 12:19 pm

Kay, you’ll be able to transfer over the events you entered in your 2008 calendar. Just to be clear, though, the widget that transfers the events hasn’t been developed yet, so if you started a new calendar today, you wouldn’t be able to transfer the dates from your previous project. But all of the event info has been tagged so that we can transfer it over once the widget’s been developed (later this year…definitely before Christmas).

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
Patricia Schmidt
Posted on:
April 9, 2009 at 2:44 pm

Stefanie you talked about paper cover books in the webnar on 4-8-09 I didn’t catch which product this was for.

Can I choose a paper cover for any of my books so it is not so expensive to print?

Comment Number:
4
Written by:
Stefanie Condie, Ancestry.com
Posted on:
April 9, 2009 at 3:56 pm

We are working on a soft cover for the 11×8.5 family history books. It should be available this summer. I think this option will appeal to people who want to order a proof copy so they can review their book in print before committing to a more expensive cover. It will also be a good option for people who want to order several copies of a book to take to a family reunion.

Comment Number:
5
Written by:
Elizabeth Bolevic
Posted on:
April 9, 2009 at 8:32 pm

I thoroughly enjoyed last night’s webinar and plan to start with a family poster. Is all the printing for all of the posters, books, etc. done on acid free archival paper?
Thank you

Comment Number:
6
Written by:
Stefanie Condie, Ancestry.com
Posted on:
April 10, 2009 at 8:15 am

Elizabeth, glad you enjoyed the webinar. Yes, we use acid-free, archival paper for all of our printed products.

Comment Number:
7
Written by:
bdwatt
Posted on:
April 15, 2009 at 2:42 pm

Wow, so much info. Family reunion in May. Need help with tree poster or something. Any suggestions.
This is so amazing.

Comment Number:
8
Written by:
JJ Stange
Posted on:
April 22, 2009 at 8:10 pm

Stephanie – I have a few questions regarding the combination family tree poster. They standard layout is great with a couple issues…
- I would like to create a combination tree with 6 generations (too little information for 7, more than enough for 5).
- No option to use a silhouette photo for those that do not have one.
- I can choose from dozens of embelishments, backgrounds and frames but I cannot create a tree with 6 generations…
- I have toiled hours in the FTM 2009 (now with Bow-Tie) but the templates are very plain and very difficult to get to a single 36X24 page for printing. I do not have the same mobility there as in MyCanvas.
- You have two products that work OK but if you had some of the features from each together it would be great.
- In FTM 2009, I can only make square thumbnails, boxes for text and no siblings of children…
- Why not a MyCanvas combination template for FTM 2009??

Comment Number:
9
Written by:
Stefanie Condie, Ancestry.com
Posted on:
April 23, 2009 at 8:36 am

JJ, there are some male and female silhouettes available in MyCanvas. Go to the Embellishments tab and look in the “Miscellaneous” folder. (It’s faster if you type “silhouette” into the search instead of scrolling through all of the embellishments in the folder.)