Books on Scrapbooking

First and foremost, scrapbooking is about saving memories. It's about documenting special places, a special time, a feeling. You are telling a story to a future generation about yourself and your family. You will probably put alot of time and money into creating a gift for your children or family and you want it to last for many generations.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) defines archival storage as "the preservation of records having permanent historic value." Archival quality indicates that a material is chemically stable, and therefore, has a stronger resistance to adverse environmental conditions, so it will have a longer lifetime as compared to photos that aren't preserved or stored in a safe manner.

There are no standards in place that quantify exactly how long your photos will last when saved with archival safe methods, but some say it's definitely longer than if theyare stored in a shoe box in your attic. You should be placing your photos and memoriabilia in a photo-safe album, not the kind that turns your precious memories yellow, and crumbly. That means not using the magnetic (sticky paged) books that your Mom used. If you are able to, pull those photos out of there and get them into something safer for them.

If you have photographs in that sort of album there are a couple of things you can do. The safest and easiest way is to take the page to a photographic copier machine (such as the Kodak Picture Maker) or to yourcamera shop and have copies made of the original photographs. The quality of your original photograph will determine the quality of the photo reprint, but generally it is hard to tell the copy from the original.

The second thing you could try would be to use a hairdryer and dental floss to losen the photos from the pages. Unfortunately the chemicals and sticky residue will remain on the back of the photo.

There is a product called "Undo" that may help you remove the residue.Keep in mind that the photo may be brittle and break or tear as you try and remove it. The second option may be timely and costly and the photo may be so adhered as not to be removed. You may be better off to take the photographic copy method.