I have found a way in which you can build a genealogy chart which includes not only your relative's names, but your family crest and motto as well. This enables us to print out a chart which is lovely and suitable for framing. Your friends and relatives will be impressed with how great it looks. This would also make a great gift for your family and is something that you can pass on to your children.

There is a great website known as, "The House of Names." This websites allows you to do a free search of your ancestral name. It will then present you with the family crest, the motto, and a history of the origin of your surname. They offer a great many items for sale and I would suggest purchasing something just because they are really cool and make great conversation pieces.

However, what we want to do is take a screenshot. After you have performed a search for your name, you want to take a screenshot of the results page. This can be done by pressing the "ctrl" and "prt sc" keys at the same time. This will create a screenshot of just the top window, that way you do not have to worry about having your desktop in your screenshot. Next you need to open up your graphics software. I use Photoshop myself, but if you do not have it you can grab a free graphics program from the citations section of this article.

Open a new file and then go to edit and from the dropdown menu click on paste. You will then see your screenshot as the image. Next you want to crop the image of the crest. Use the crop tool to encircle the perimeter of the crest and then complete the command. You will then have an image that includes only your family crest. Save the image as a JPG image. Name it something simple so that you know what the image contains. These steps may vary for each program, but the help file will explain how to use the basic program tools, which is all that we really need. Repeat these steps for every crest that you wish to have in your chart.

As a side note, make sure that you write down all of the information that you want to include in your chart. This information may include the family motto, and perhaps some interesting facts about your family name. Next you will want to find an interesting background image. I would suggest an image at least 800x600 in size as this will cover the background of your image without too much stretching and distortion. A nice touch would be to search Google images for a background which has a medieval feel to it.

When you

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