Posted in Heirloom |
Making a recipe scrapbook
January 21st, 2007
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Full question:
I am making recipie scrapbooks for my sisters, and sister-in-law for next Christmas of all my great grandmother, grandma, and mom’s recipies. Have you made one before? ?f you have, do you have any suggestions? I want the theme to be something like “generations of good cooking”. I plan on the books only being a 6X6 so when they are cooking they don’t have a big 12×12 on the counter. I just need someone else’s creative mind to help me on how to get started. I have already typed, printed and cut the recipies to the size of a recipe card. Thanks for any ideas!!
My answer:
I can help with this one! I just made *8* of these for Christmas gifts for this last Christmas - three for my sisters, one for my mother, one for each of my three kids and one for me. So I have some suggestions I can share!
* I made mine 8.5 X 11 and I did that because the supplies I wanted to use required no cutting if I did that. You’ll see more about why that was important in just a minute.
* I typed all the recipes into my computer and then printed off the number of copies I needed (8). I ALSO made copies of my stained and smudged and obviously used recipe cards to use as embellishments in the albums. They look SO COOL.
* I put the recipes on one piece of paper on the LEFT side of the book and a picture of who gave me the recipe on the RIGHT side. So anyone using a recipe would have a picture of who’s recipe it was. And I scrapped both sides - stickers, ribbons, metal embellishments - you name it - I used it.
* I wrote journaling about where the recipes commonly appeared - for instance there is an egg dish I frequently make for Mother’s Day and a cookie my oldest son prefers to cake for his birthday. So I told stories that remind people of times when the recipes were served.
* I also wrote journaling about the people. I looked the meaning up online of mine and my sister’s names - and included them in the book on a page with their picture.
* I used OVERHEAD TRANSPARENCIES as SPLASH GUARDS for ALL the pages. So if you open the album to a recipe, there is a clear sheet that covers the recipe and another clear sheet that covers the person’s picture. So no mixer throwing cake mix around the kitchen will get anything on the pages. THIS is one reason I went with 8.5X11. All I had to do with the transparency sheets was use a three hole punch on them (which worked just fine)
* I used a standard loose leaf notebook for this.
* I put pages with pockets inside so people could put recipe cards in them. Clear sheet covers are great for this.
* I put a family tree and special dedication (with date) in the very front of the book
* For older recipes, like my grand mother’s coconut pie, I used the Internet to get interesting info about old fashioned ingredients. For instance, her recipe called for “sweet milk” and I looked up online what that was and wrote a little blurb about. Did the same thing with my father’s “glop” recipe.
* I added a few “tips” I found in old cookbooks - stuff I didn’t know and thought were interesting
* I did sections with tabs - soups, salads, sides, main dishes, desserts, and misc.
* I left “blanks” in the back of the book so people could add more stuff to it if they wanted.
* I found , when making so many of the same thing, that doing all eight of the same page at the same time went faster than doing one book at a time (which is how I started doing them).
Your Frugal Decorating Diva,
Nancy
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Ilse on 20 Feb 2007 at 9:27 am: 1
Wow Nancy,
I was just looking for ideas to make a recipe scrapbook just for me. Your article has given me lots of ideas. Do you happen to have photos of the scrapbooks you made? I’d love to see them!
Regards,
Ilse M
answers on 25 Mar 2007 at 11:21 am: 2
Thanks for asking! I am adding another post to the blog with photos. You can see it at
http://www.askthefrugaldecoratingdiva.com/blog/making-a-recipe-scrapbook-photos/