<html> <head> <title>Keepsake-Specials</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <style type="text/css"> #iuyu28 { font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; text-align: center; } #uiwue84 { font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; } #iwiue83 { font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: center; } #uiwue84us { font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: center; } #iduu2838 { font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 7.9px; } </style> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0"> <table id="Table_01" width="591" height="590" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td id="iuyu28">iMemories: Make Sure You Never Lose Your Most Precious-Keepsakes!</td> </tr> <tr> <td> <center><a href="http://digitalinfo.digitalmomentosnewspecials.com"><img src="http://see1.digitalmomentosnewspecials.com" width="465" height="205" alt=""></a></center></td> </tr> <tr> <td id="uiwue84">Hello rivet@projects.hepforge.org, </td> </tr> <tr> <td id="iwiue83"> Almost all of us have old home movies, photographs, negatives and more stored in our attics, basements, closets, etc. The fact is that this old medium can get damaged, wear out, and other things that will cause you to lose your treasured-memories, but it doesn't have to be this way. iMemories will convert all these old-keepsakes to a digital medium and put on DVD for you to enjoy as often as you'd like and also to be preserved for future-generations. <a href="http://digitalinfo.digitalmomentosnewspecials.com">Go Here to Try iMemories Now</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td id="uiwue84us"> If you would.prefer to not-receive further-memoryads-please <a href="http://ckeg8.digitalmomentosnewspecials.com">visit-here</a>. :_2885 Sanford Avenue.S.W.No.40442. Grandville, M.l. #49418. </td> </tr> <tr> <td id="iduu2838"> It’s a big question. What will you keep for your children as they grow older? What toys and personal mementos are they going to want to remember and look through later? What will they treasure as adults? I almost cried when I found my old, tiny dollhouse furniture. I didn’t know my mom had saved it. We placed it in Lane’s dollhouse to give to her for Christmas. When it comes to saving toys and other keepsakes, there are three important considerations. Three Questions How much was it loved? How big is it? How well will it keep? In other words, will it store well and is it worth keeping? One thing I know we will save is the wooden play food from Haba. It’s small, it gets played with all the time, and it will look exactly the same in thirty years. I want to have a few toys available for small guests to play with at our house, and then pass them on to grandchildren. Passing it Down Here’s a question from a Small Notebook reader: How do you explain to your kids who say we don’t want “our” stuff now, they want it later on in their life? I have been trying to sort through memories like their scrapbooks, childhood trophies, art pictures from every elementary year, etc., and they are upset with me saying they do not want to have to store these things. Yet I am wanting to downsize to a smaller house. I do not want my children to think their things are not important to me. My children are in their late 20’s, early 30’s and have smaller places so they do not have a lot of extra storage space. How well I can relate to that dilemma! I’ve lived in an apartment my entire adult life, and I wasn’t ready to receive the big storage boxes of keepsakes my mom saved. It’s “out of sight, out of mind” when it’s at your house, and most grown kids will be satisfied to leave their stuff at your house for as long as you’ll let them. Or maybe they want it, but not yet. Either way, it’s delayed decisions. It’s difficult to know what will hold sentimental value to another person, so the best thing to do is sort through it with their help. Just be careful to stay focused so that you don’t end up reminiscing and then putting it all back in the boxes when you’re done. A couple of years ago I looked through those boxes with my mom, and together we were able to reduce how much stuff was being kept. I didn’t care about old trophies. I reduced a big storage bin of elementary school art papers down to one artwork album that I love to look at. A ! few other things weren’t looking so good, and the memories were better. If you can’t work on it together in person, maybe you could do it over email. Send pictures of the item with the subject line, “Do you want this?” Do your grown children still want the actual item, or the memory of it? Maybe you could find old pictures of them playing with beloved toys, to keep instead. Don’t forget the golden rule of keeping sentimental things: the fewer things you keep, the more special they are. Picture frames, mat boards, and glazing help protect artwork and keepsakes from deterioration, but how do you protect unframed materials? Especially those with organic materials like dried roses from a wedding bouquet, or something more extensive, like a collection of plants. My grandfather was a horticulturist, which is a person who uses scientific knowledge to cultivate and propagate plants. I recently inherited one of his herbaria from the early 1970’s. Herbariums are collections of dried plant specimens usually mounted and systematically arranged for use in scientific studies. Plants present storage challenges similar to art prints and canvases since plant materials are composed of cellulose, the basic component of most papers, textiles, and wooden objects. My grandfather had kept his herbarium in a dimly lit, air-conditioned room, so it was at least protected from light and temperature fluctuations. I was concerned though with the visible acid migration from the plants onto the paper containing his hand-written notes. Objects containing plant materials in combination with other organic and inorganic substances create more problems than those made from a single material because changes in one substance can cause physical and chemical alterations in an adjacent one. In the picture below you can see the difference between paper with an attached plant specimen (left) and one without (right). All of plants in the herbarium are common and easy to find; however, my deceased grandfather’s handwriting cannot be replaced. Since my main concern was preserving his handwriting, I decided to remove all the plant specimens to prevent any further acid migration from them to the paper. I didn’t want to throw them away, but wasn’t sure how to store them in an archival manner. The National Park Service’s “Conserve O Gram” on Preparing and Storing Herbarium Specimens suggests mounting dried plants on acid free, pH neutral 100% alpha cellulose or cotton rag paper using adhesive linen tape and then placing them in an acid free, pH neutral fragment envelope. My company sells a variety of archival products for image mounting and display. I selected our Bainbridge Artcare™ acid free mount board, see-thru archival mounting strips, and protective Clear Bags™ for mounting and storing the dried plants. Wearing cotton gloves to keep the oils from my hands off the plants, I carefully removed all of the plant specimens and mounted them onto the foam board using the mounting strips. Since the specimens were all fairly small, so I chose 5”x 7” backer boards. We can cut custom mount boards, however, in any size up to 40”x 60”. The mounting strips are peel and stick and you can cut them into different sizes. None of the adhesive touches the plants, only the polyester strip. I placed acid free labels with the specimen’s name on the back on each foam board and then placed them in individual Clear Bags. These bags are museum quality, acid-free and lignin-free crystal clea! r. The adhesive strip is actually on the bag - not the flap - so that your contents won’t get stuck to the adhesive when being inserted or removed. Finally, I placed his herbarium and all of the plant specimens in one of our Museum Storage Boxes. These boxes are made of acid-free buffered board which helps neutralize airborne pollutants and other contaminants. I am storing the box in a temperature-controlled room. Hopefully, by taking these steps, it will last another 40 years or longer</td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>