Dangerous embellishment

Can't believe what I saw when I rearrange my album (basically splitting it into two so that all the pages fit nicely and flat). I discovered most of the brads that I used are rusted and it stained the pages behind them. Gosh! I know I've been warned by Sandra of Creative Memories before. Creative Memories encourage their members to do flat layout for archival purposes, a big no no for brads!
Now I really feel and truly understand it after seeing those rusted brads. They do look nice and easy to use for attaching flowers, ribbons, overlay etc. But if they will spoil my photos and paper, I would rather give them up. Thus I've changed almost all of the brads (still have another album to go through) to buttons.
Another way that I think might be useful is to use zot on the brad's legs before attaching them near to the photos, instead of popping them right through the pages.
The best of all is to avoid using them. I'll have to keep on reminding myself on this, change to buttons, change to buttons, or stickers.
In Creative Memories, not even button is encouraged on layout, as bulkiness will dent the photos which then indirectly will shorten the life span of the photos and pages.
I hope my pages won't turn to boring layout without brads...