Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Krylon Preserve It! and Krylon Make It Acid Free

By Christina VanGinkel

With hobbies that make use of papers, photos, and even many found items so trendy these days, such as card making, scrapbooking, and paper piecing, there is also a growing need for those products that will help protect and preserve the various pieces and projects you make. This is especially true if you find yourself incorporating items into your projects that might not be acid free or archival safe. Consider the fact of all the old photo albums that are on bookshelves across the globe, that just a few short years ago, we all thought were the perfect way to protect our cherished memories. These very albums are now yellowing and even cracking with age, all because they were not Acid Free.

Stepping up to this distressing issue is Krylon, with several products manufactured specifically for preserving and protecting your new memories, and even your old ones to a point, so they do not deteriorate like so many of our old ones did, and continue to do every day that we leave them in the outdated photo albums, cardboard boxes, and drawers that were not made to preserve and protect them.

Krylon Maki It Acid Free is packaged in a convenient to use aerosol form, which raises the pH level of acidic papers and literally slows down any aging that would otherwise happen naturally. By neutralizing the very acid that causes newspaper clippings, awards, and other forms of paper to yellow and turn brittle, it helps you to be able to much better preserve these items that you might otherwise not be able. If you do use it, read the directions as to how much to spray, and from what distance, but keep in mind that it goes on almost invisibly. It dries almost instantly, with no long waiting times for things to dry, and works by creating a buffer and allowing you to keep right on working on whatever project you might be involved in. Even pieces that are already breaking down and aging can be sprayed with this product to effectively halt the aging process in its tracks.

Krylon Preserve it! Digital Photo and Paper Protectant, is an acid free, archival safe product that is also in an aerosol form, the same as Krylon's Make It Acid Free. It is made to help protect the many files and photos that we output through our computer printers, fax machines, copy machines, and other digital formats. Too often, these items are subject to ink runs, problems with moisture, common smudges, and early fading and early aging, causing issues with the break down of these files long before we would have ever though possible. It is said to more than double the life of any digital photograph or print you apply it to. It also works to guard your precious documents against stains. Project suggestions to use it on include handcrafted greeting cards, address labels you print on your own computer printer, all of your digital photos you print at home or through a kiosk printer, and any scrapbook layout that has items youa re unsure of their acid free status. Krylon also gives a list of reccoemded surfaces that this can be sprayed on, and the list includes:

Ceramic / Plaster
Glass
Metal
Paper
Papier Mache
Plastic
Wicker
Wood

Both of these products are ideal for any of the items listed that you plan to use in scrapbooks, or even those you just plan to store in photo albums or boxes (as long as the storage itself is acid free). If you have old photos or documents stored in unsafe storage containers, begin the process of preserving them and not letting them further break down, by removing them from those unsuitable containers, and treating them with the Krylon Make It Acid Free spray. For all your new files, treat every single one with the Krylon Preserve It! Digital Photo and Paper Protectant so that those memories that they represent will still be around many years from now for others to enjoy and share in what was once your most treasured possessions.
Thanks to products such as these, preserving our memories in numerous ways is becoming more enjoyable to participate in, as we have fewer worries about all of our hard work literally ending up in the trash.

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