JEAN DAUGHERTY DESIGNS

My husband and I are retired, he was a letter carrier for the USPS and I was an elementary school teacher. We celebrated 50 wonderfully married years together in 2007, with 2 grown children and 3 grand children.

Blessed with a gift to be able to create, I have done a little of everything from doing tons of posters to artwork in yearbooks during my high school years. I majored in art and Elementary Education in college with the idea of either being a graphic artist or a teacher, and teaching won, but I always had my artwork as a part of my life.

During the years of raising children, I transferred that creative urge to designing and sewing clothes for my daughter, her dolls and me. I loved the joy and peaceful times with hand stitching and quilting quilts. I even painted designs on tee shirts.

When my children were of school age, I began to think about leaving for them a legacy about their family roots. I was always curious about it myself, so I began spending lots of hours in a family history library in the afternoons while they were in school. By that time, I had taken some time off from teaching to be a stay at home mom for a few years until they were older. And that’s how my passion for genealogy began, and has
continued through the years. The more information I found, the more I wanted to continue research. So when I had spare time from homemaking or teaching, I did genealogy research.

In 2003 after my mother passed away, I wanted to do a memory book about her life as a gift for her siblings, my siblings, and my children; so, I created a scrapbook with pictures and stories about her life. It was a work of art, but when faced with the idea of doing about 8 of them, it was overwhelming, and I looked for a way I could reproduce one copy, and that’s when I discovered digital scrap booking!

Creating Family History albums is an awesome way to record treasured information, and in 2008, I started designing the papers and elements to go on those pages. So designing has been the perfect fit for helping me to create the legacy I wanted to leave. If only I could find more time now to continue researching, it would be the perfect balance!

Thank you for your continued support,
Jean Daugherty/Jean Daugherty Designs