Papercrafting a Cookbook

Hi Everyone!

It's been a few days since you have heard from me. I actually took some time off from papercrafting to visit with friends, bake zucchini bread and zucchini chocolate cake, and fill 2 large Dutch ovens with soup. While I was making the soup I had an idea. I decided to create some cookbooks with recipes for 6 of my family's favorite soups in it and give them to some of my family and friends for holiday gifts.


I recently ordered sheets of 8.5" x 11" chipboard from http://www.ckresale.com/ to use to create mini albums, but decided to also use some of it for my cookbooks. The company shipped quickly and the heavy package was packed very well. My only "complaint" is that many of the sheets of chipboard measured 8.25" x 11" instead of the 8.5" x 11" that I ordered.

I used my paper cutter to cut the chipboard so that it measured 8.5" x 5.5" which means I got 2 pages from one sheet of chipboard. My paper trimmer struggled when I attempted to use it to cut the chipboard, but the paper cutter cut it easily.

I cut 4 (8.5" x 11") pieces of chipboard so that I would have 8 (8.5" x 5.5") pages for my cookbook. I rubbed a dye ink pad along the side edges of the chipboard to give them some color. I also brushed that same dye ink pad along the front and back edges. I used Scor-tape to affix 8.5" x 5.5" sheets of paper from dcwv's Nana's Kitchen 12" x 12" paper stack to both sides of the 8 pages. Then I used a 2-hole paper punch to punch holes at the top of each page.


I typed, printed, and trimmed the recipes I wanted to use and glued them to just one side of 6 of the pages I had covered with paper. I didn't glue a recipe to the page that I am using as a back cover. I decorated one page to use as the cover of my book.

I wanted to use cooking tools, aprons, chef hats, and vegetables to embellish the cover and the pages in my book. Die cuts, rubber stamps, chipboard pieces, and stickers are just some of the products I could use to create those embellishments.

I have a Sizzix apron and oven mitt die. Jolee, Recollections, Mrs. Grossman, SandyLion, and Maya Road are among the companies that have the products that I had in mind. I decided that some of the layered embellishments that I love to use on my cards didn't work for me in my cookbook so I peeled the ones I had down to one layer. I wanted the look of dimension without actually having dimension so I coated most of my embellishments with Glossy Accents. I was thrilled with the results. By adding a coating of Glossy Accents to ordinary stickers I transformed them into epoxy stickers.  If you study this picture you will see the difference between a spoon that has been coated with Glossy Accents and one that hasn't. 

I used plastic chicken rings from Creative Teaching Press to bind my book together. Metal book rings would of course also work, but I have lots of chicken rings so I decided to use them. The letters I used on this first book are Maya Road chipboard letters. I sprayed them with Maya Road's red metallic mist and let them dry before I adhered them to the book cover.

I designed the cookbook with the rings at the top so that the pages could be flipped over until you reach the recipe that you want to use.  The cookbook will stand up on its own. 

It took some time to figure out how I wanted to create my cookbooks. Now that I have done that I have decided to make one for our favorite Christmas cookies.  While I was shopping for embellishments for my soup cookbook, I picked up others for the cookie cookbook.  Once it is created I will share photographs of it with you. 
 
When Robbie and Marie were young children most of my family lived in the area and often joined us for Thanksgiving dinner.  In addition to the turkey and stuffing our meal included a multitude of vegetables and a vast selection of pies and breads.  Marie insists that we include all of those foods year after year even when it's just the 3 of us having dinner.  I am planning to create a cookbook called "A Hartery Thanksgiving" especially for Robbie and Marie so that they each have a collection of the recipes for our traditional meal. 
 

My life is especially busy these days as I plan the trainings and classes I will be teaching this fall so I may not be posting quite as often as I have over the past 5 months, but please stop by to check for a new post and please leave a comment so I know you've been reading the posts.  Talk to you soon! 

PS....I am adding this message 2 days after I created the cookbook.  Today was the day that I made the date book which is in the post that follows this one.  The pages in the date book are made from heavy scrapbooking paper that was folded in half which is the equivalent of 2 sheets of paper backed together.  I have decided that when I make future cookbooks including the cookie one I have been working on tonight, the front and back covers will be made with chipboard that is covered with scrapbook paper.  The pages will be made with 2 sheets of heavy scrapbook paper that are glued back to back.  The pages will still be able to flip over the top of the book and the book will still be able to stand because the covers will support the weight of the pages.  If you decided to make cookbooks you may want to try them that way.  Talk to you again soon.

Carol