Restoring Old Photo Albums into Pocket Page Scrapbooks (Part Three)

Hello, welcome to part three of the series Restoring Old Photo Albums into Pocket Page Scrapbooks. If you've missed either part of this series you can find them here Part One & Part Two.

When we left off at part two we had a pile of photos that had come out of the old albums and were ready to be put into brand new pocket page protectors.

I wish that I would have counted the number of hours that it took for this entire project. I know it hugely exceeded the time frame I had initially planned.

I am, however, so happy that I took this project on and I really appreciate all the help that I got to finish it. A recently I made the trek to visit my grandparents and show them the albums. I should have taken a video of my grandpa's reaction. He was thrilled. I spent a couple of hours sitting at the table with him. We listened to stories he had to tell about the photos that we had put into the albums. I wrote a lot of them down. I can't wait to spend more time with him going through the albums.

Here are a few of the finished pocket page spreads:

 These pages were done with the We R Memory Keepers Farmers Market journaling cards. This is the perfect collection if you're doing a vintage or heritage project. The colors are perfect for vintage photos. I love that they're made with a soft color palette so that vintage black and white photos stand out.

This page was made using the We R Memory Keepers Captured line. I used these cards for the colored photos. I loved how the bold colors complimented the photos that were taken in the 70's and 80's. 

You'll notice a lot of blank journaling cards. I will fill those out when I can visit more with my grandparents. I'll write their stories on those blank cards.

I don't know how to express to you how amazing the We R Memory Keepers Albums are. They are worth every penny. They're absolutely beautiful and their quality is unmatched. These are the only albums I will be buying in the future. 

When we were finishing up with this project I made a list of things we learned while doing this project.

What we learned:

• Each photo needs to have a name (first and last) and a date. Nowadays it's especially important for digital files. Name your files with the person's name who is in the photo. We found many photos that had just a first name and so so many that didn't have a date. I don't put a first and last name on every page I create but I do keep them in albums by person (I have an album for each member of my family).

• Don't write on the photos! Don't write on the front (or the back) of the photo. The ink will most likely bleed and become unreadable. If you really need the information permanently attached to the photo write or type the information on an archival quality label and then adhere the label to the back of the photo.

• Don't permanently adhere irreplaceable photos. We used hundreds of photos on this project. I wanted to make sure that the photo could be taken out and then replaced if needed. I also wanted to make sure that if there was any information or handwriting on the back of the photos that it could be seen if needed.

• Use archival quality products as much as possible. Nowadays most products are archival quality. You'll see a lot of them that say "acid free" those are the products you want to use. The old "magnetic" albums from the 80's are the ones that have glue that are made with acid. That's what was ruining my photos. You do need to be careful with some of the embellishments that are popular today.  Wood veneer and cork are not archival quality and shouldn't ever touch your photos.
• Write your stories down! Write your own stories down, even if there are not photos to go with the stories. My grandparents told so many stories that didn't have photos. The memories were sparked by a photo they saw in the albums.

Thank you for following along with this series. I hope that somewhere along the way you're inspired to take care of some of your old photos.
 
Here is a list of supplies I used for this project:
We R Memory Keepers Farmers Market
We R Memory Keepers Captured 
We R Memory Keepers Albums  
We R Memory Keepers Photo Sleeves
Photo, Slide, and Negative Scanner

Waxed Dental Floss 
Project Life Journaling Pens

We R Memory Keepers Journaling Cards 

Self Adhesive Photo Corners
band-aids

Restoring Old Photo Albums into Pocket Page Scrapbooks (Part Two)

If you missed part one of this series you can find it HERE.

Initially I thought I would be able to do this project on my own in my free-time. 

Well, because I got the albums in November and they were still sitting in the same spot, untouched in May I decided to call in reinforcements. 

My mom, my sister, my sister-in-law, and my cousin came to my rescue. We planned a day when we could all get together and get this project done (or so we thought we could get it done. It turns out we'd need more than one day).

When we all get together it's a house full of kiddos. Between us we have 10 kids. I knew that this day would take a lot of effort and planning on my part to make sure we could be as productive as possible. I got all the supplies ready and spread out across my kitchen table. 

I got snacks ready for everyone. 

 Snacks for the kids

and snacks for the moms. Although I made a terrible mistake here and there was clearly not enough chocolate for the moms. I won't make that mistake again, I promise!

The first task was to get the photos out of the albums. Some of them came right off, some of them...didn't. This is where the dental floss and band-aids came into play. We used the dental floss to remove the photos from the sticky background by placing the dental floss under the corner of the photo and gently working the photo away from the backing. 

*tip: put band-aids on your fingers before you do start this process. Otherwise you'll cut your fingers from having the dental floss wrapped around your fingers, pulling against all the nasty adhesive and then you'll need band-aids so you don't get blood on the photos. You can thank me later. 

I did some research on how to remove the photos before I started this process and I chose the dental floss method. A couple of other recommendations were to use heat to soften the glue and then remove the photos. One article recommended putting the pages in the microwave. I was scared that I would scorch the photos or just my luck, they'd start on fire. Another article recommended using a hair dryer. Honestly, I just didn't want to risk heating the photos and having them get warped or scorched. The dental floss was a pain but it worked well. I only had one photo that tore and it was only a very small tear on the side of one of the photos.

After we had all the photos out of an album we scanned each one onto a memory card. As I said in my previous post, I used this Photo, Slide, and Negative Scanner. It worked amazingly well! It was so easy, all you have to do is feed the photo through the scanner! Really, that's it. You feed the photo into the front of the scanner and it comes out the back. When the memory card is full you replace it with a new one. Easy peasy! My only complaint is that it wasn't big enough to scan anything bigger than a 4x6 photo. I knew that when I bought it, so I really can't complain. It wasn't a huge deal because I only had a handful of bigger photos and I was able to scan them using my flat bed scanner. 

Pretty soon we had a stack of photos ready to be put into the new pocket page protectors and albums.

Make sure you stop by next week for Part 3 of Restoring Old Photo Albums into Pocket Page Scrapbooks where I'll have the final product ready to show you, as well as my grandparents reaction.

Here's another look at what supplies I used to complete this project.

Here's a list of supplies that I gathered for this project:
We R Memory Keepers Albums  
We R Memory Keepers Photo Sleeves
Photo, Slide, and Negative Scanner

Waxed Dental Floss 
Project Life Journaling Pens

We R Memory Keepers Journaling Cards 

Self Adhesive Photo Corners
band-aids

 

Restoring Old Photo Albums into Pocket Page Scrapbooks (Part One)

The day after Thanksgiving my family and I made the trek to visit my grandparents. They live about an hour away from our home, unfortunately we don't get to see them as often as I would like to. This particular day we ate, visited, watch some old home videos and then later in the afternoon we helped Grandma put her Christmas decorations up. As I was in the back of her closet getting Christmas decorations out I came across these: (which is why I'm telling you about what happened last Thanksgiving ;)