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Posted By: runscott

I had to hold my breath to drink it. On the other hand, people from that town thought everyone else's water was horrible.

But regarding cards, I'm sure it's much more preferable to use distilled water, and several board members have mentioned this in the past.

Most of the scrapbook damage I have repaired has involved small amounts of residue on the back. For cases like those you can avoid total soaking if you are careful:

You can avoid soaking by "dabbing" water onto the scrapbook residue, just enough to soak through the residue but NOT any more into the actual card than is necessary. I wrap a thin kitchen towel over my index finger to do this, but then - I have a very accurate index finger - you may not. A Q-tip (not cue-tip...Lee) is certainly preferable for those who are less lazy than I. You can then softly "push" off the residue, but a little glue will certainly remain. You want to get rid of the glue before you wrap the card in typing paper, so dab a little bit more water over the glue area, gently wiping off the glue. Then go through the same drying process mentioned previously. Don't be paranoid about the glue - if you rub too hard you will remove lettering - from my experience the glue used back then is not going to bond heavily to the typing paper, so if trace amounts remain you will be okay....but get what you can.

...unintended result: the first time I tried this I was really proud of myself (avoiding soaking,etc.) until I pulled the card from between the typing paper and it was WARPED and badly! I freaked out, then went back and soaked the card, but not all the way through. Repeated the drying process... still warped! I ended up having to soak the card for a LONG time - until it had absorbed an equal amount of water throughout the entire card. I was a little worried, but it worked out fine. The warping problem resulted, obviously, because I dabbed too much water onto the scrapbook residue areas and soaked "water pots" into my card.