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

Happy Days

Hi Everyone!

On Friday Robbie will celebrate his 25th birthday. Late one night about a year or so ago, he called me to his room. "Listen," he said to me. I listened and heard the hooting owl that he had heard. We sat in the darkness listening to the owl calling out again and again. Hooting owls are rare in our neighborhood so we were both excited about Rob’s discovery. We heard the owl a few more times over the next few weeks. On night’s that we didn’t hear it, as we were calling out good night to each other one or both of us would "Who-o-o."

I am guessing that story sounds sort of silly to those of you who are reading this post, but there’s more to the story. Robbie and Marie both asked what I wanted for Mother’s Day and I mentioned some choices of clear stamps from PaperTrey Ink. Rob went online and discovered that the stamps he had planned to give me were out of stock. On his own he scrolled through all of the stamps that are shown on PaperTrey Ink’s web site and discovered their "Wise Owl" stamps. He wasn’t sure if I already owned them or not and didn’t want to give away his discovery to me so he took ALL of my stamps into his room and checked through them to be sure. He was delighted to discover that "Wise Owl" wasn’t among my collection and ordered them for me.

When the package arrived Rob was as excited about his gift as I was because he had found and selected "Wise Owl" on his own. He gave them to me along with a very special note that ended with the words, "Love, Guess Who-o-o."

And so I created this "Who-o-o" card for Robbie’s 25th birthday. I know it will be meaningful to him. The branch on the card is from PaperTrey Ink’s "Take a Bough" collection. The owl is from PaperTrey Ink’s "Wise Owl" collection. The moon and the leaves are stickers from Recollections.

Riley, is my sister Jeanne’s dog. She loves Riley as if she were her biological child. I’ve created several "Riley" cards for Jeanne over the past 6 months or so. When I saw the "Patriotic Puppy" stamp on the Serendipty Stamp’s web site I knew I had to buy it to use on a card for Jeanne. "Happy 4th of July" is a stamp from Northwoods Rubber Stamps. I used Stickles to highlight the fireworks that are a part of the stamp. The background fireworks are stickers from Mrs. Grossman. The flag and dish of food are also stickers.

I loved the fireworks stickers from Mrs. Grossman so much that I decided to use them on a card of their own. I already had the blue sticker letters on my table so I quickly added them to the card.
It didn’t take me very long to create those 3 cards, but I am guessing the recipients will all enjoy them.

Have a great night!

Carol