Why You Never Use Magnetic Photo Albums

The very first "scrapbook" (if I dare call it that) that I ever created was a travel book that I made after a trip with my best friend to Mexico in 1998. It was really my first experience traveling, and when we returned we decided to make scrapbooks of the trip. Looking back now it was really very, very primitive. But it was 1998 and the popularity of scrapbooking was just beginning to grow and I didn't have any idea what I was doing. I put some pictures and ticket stubs in an album, printed out a bunch of labels and called it good.

My biggest mistake was not the lack of any real type of creativity, it was in using the wrong albums. Yup, I used the old magnetic style photo albums and didn't really give much thought to how these albums would look or hold up over over the next 15 years. I knew they weren't the greatest albums to use at the time, but I was young and not really planning ahead. I pulled the albums out today and noticed that they are not in good condition and they are yellowing and deteriorating. Some pages seem fine while the page right next to it is yellow.

Here is why you never use magnetic style albums (these photos don't really do it justice, it looks a lot worse in person):

So now I'm faced with a bit of an unexpected project - making new albums. I'm kind of excited at the idea of creating something new with these old photos, and kind of sad at losing my first scrapbooks no matter how sad and boring the pages may be.

If I do redo the albums, I think it would be fun to take some "before" photos of these old albums and some "after " photos of the new albums. Scrapbooking is constantly evolving and as new products come out our own styles and techniques change as well. Looking at these photos now I have so many ideas of how I would do them differently - papers and patterns that I'd use, color schemes, labels, journaling.

I think I can make the album fairly quickly - as the photos are all 3.5 x 5 and I can get several on each page. I would probably add several of things that are not in the albums now - like maps, maybe some signs I can get photos of online, and journaling cards.

Has anyone ever redone an album in a situation like this? How did it turn out? Any tips for me?