My First Scrapbooks

I started scrapbooking a year after my son was born. Sad to say I used those magnetic photo albums that are laden with chemicals that seeped through the pictures like rust on iron. I recycled greetings cards to decorate the pages. I even went to the extent of buying greeting cards to use as embellishments. The layouts I made were beautiful. The journal was typed-written on bond paper and pasted on colored art paper. I meticulously hand-cut the edges of each tag and label. The paste of course was probably not acid-free.

When my daughter was born 12 years later I did the same thing. The result was the same - faded pictures.

Now I know why my aunts kept their pictures in photo albums with black pages and a page of vellum in between each page protecting the pictures from the black page before it. They even bought photo corners to hold their pictures. I watched them arrange the pictures on those pages, wondering why they just don't paste the other pictures on the pages when they ran out of photo corners.
Did they know something then about the term "acid-free" or did they use these supplies because they were the only ones available during that time?

Now I know better, so I'm racing against time saving those faded memories by scanning and retouching them. It is a lot of work but it will be worth it!