Transcript
A lot of us who are starting to scrapbook are trying to decide whether we need all these products that say ‘acid free’ and so on. It really depends on what your purpose is in scrapbooking. If you’re creating a scrapbook that you want to hand on to your children, and your grandchildren, and you want to last for the next fifty or a hundred or more years, then certainly, you do want to think about your projects and all the products you use in them, being safe. Archival safe, photo safe, acid free, so that they will last for that long time. Because if the products are not necessarily acid free, they can break down over time.
Think of a newspaper, and how if you picked up a newspaper from a hundred years ago, that paper would be crumbling in your hands. That’s the kind of thing we’re worried about. The wood, the lignans, the acid in some of these products that cause them to deteriorate over time. So, if that’s the type of scrapbooking that you plan to do, then you definitely want to look for products that are labeled in a way that you can be assured that they will last. And I’ve got a few here, so I just want you to see. For example this says, ‘acid free’. This paper pad is lignan free, acid free, so these are just some examples of products, as most products are, that are specifically made for scrapbooking that are archival safe.
Now, you may be like me, I’m not making scrapbooks for my children and grandchildren, I don’t have any children. I make scrapbooks for me because, it’s just fun. And, if that’s where you’re at then really you don’t have to worry so much about those ‘acid free’ or ‘archival properties’ of the things that you put in your scrapbook. And we see a lot of this, especially in things like our smash book.
Where we’re putting in staples, and wood, and fabric, although fabric is not so much of an issue because it tends not to have wood products. But those are the kinds of things that you want to think about. So if you’re definitely creating a scrapbook for posterity, definitely look for those products that are archival safe. And if you’re not, just go for it. Anything that you want to put in your book.
