Dear Oion,

Well, in the beginning, I left the staples and tape intact
on the cels, but if the layers were not stuck, I would slip
each layer a cel bag to prevent future sticking (sort of
like slipping a record in its cover if anyone here remembers
vinal records!).  Now, however, I remove all staples and
tape whenever possible!

The staples are quite easy to remove if you have nice long
fingernails =).  The tape on the other hand is a bit
trickier!  You need LOTS of patience and fingernails to do
it!  If you get the tape off just right, the whole piece
will come off without leaving much sticky residue in its
wake.  If you don't get the tape off right, you will spend
LOTS of time picking each tiny little piece off the cel 8(!
To remove the sticky residue off a cel, use a piece of clean
transparent tape, stick part of the tape onto the residue
area, and remove.  Do this repeatedly until the residue is
gone!  (Yes, I've almost made it science!)  This works best
if you use the same piece of tape because the tape will
accumulate the residue on it that will help remove the
residue from the cel (I really hope I'm making sense here!).
By using this method, you don't have to worry about harmful
chemicals ruining the cel!  You do have to lie the cel on
a nice flat surface though and hold it down flat while you
do it though.  This method is great for removing pesky
stickers from almost any surface (glossy book covers,
anything plastic or metal, etc.)!  You do have to be careful
with some book covers though because sometimes this will
loosen the gluing between the cover and the cardboard
underneath.

As for tape on backgrounds, LEAVE THEM INTACT!  The above
method will NOT remove them safely!  If you try removing
tape from a background, it will rip the surface and ruin the
background!  The only exception to that case is when the
tape has completely melded to the background (VERY YELLOWED
TAPE).  You can remove the tape safely, but the yellow
sticky residue will be left behind =P!  In these cases, if
the tape is used to stick a cel and background together, I
would carefully cut the tape at the junction between the cel
and background and just remove the tape from the cel itself.
Then I would place everything into separate bags and tape
everything into place on the bag surface (hence my current
drought of cel bags!)!  That way, everything is safe from
everything else!  You can do the same with each cel layer
if they are NOT stuck (use bags or parts of bags to protect
each surface from one another)!  The resulting display may
be a bit bulky (hence my FAT cel books =b!) and look clouded
because of the layers upon layers of cel bags, but
everything is safe from everything else.

Whew!  I guess that's it from me!  I hope you didn't get too
bored reading my post!  I hope this helps!


Sincerely,

Sonia