In The House in Wattle Lane, Neave traces the journey of her ancestors through creating a heritage scrapbook album. I began my own heritage album with my great-great-grandmother, who emigrated from the Shetland Islands to New Zealand in 1875. How courageous she and her family must have been to make that long and treachorous sea journey, plagued with storms and illness, to begin a new life on the other side of the world. They had no idea what awaited them when they got there, and to start a new life from scratch must have been very hard indeed. Like many others of their time, they were true pioneers.

I decided to leave the brown album page plain for the background to give the layout a vintagey look. Elements that I used on this page include scraps of lace, a vintage doily, a vintage key, old buttons, bejewelled trim, scrapbook…