Creating a scrapbook of favorite recipes can be a labor of love. It's not just the food that's important, it's all the memories associated with the dishes. With a scrapbook, you can capture the spirit of family dinners and memories right on the page.
Preserving Handwritten Recipes
It's important to preserve those family recipes for future generations, but it's also nice to preserve the "character" that goes with them. Why type out a fresh copy of Grandma's best birthday cake recipe if you can still read the one she wrote by hand? Even if the page is yellowed by time, it's still a priceless family treasure.
To preserve recipes like these, you can take a photo or scan the original and print the image out on archival paper. It will still have the vintage look of the original, but you won't need to worry about further deterioration.
Adding Photos
Recipes are the heart and soul of a cookbook scrapbook. However, keep in mind that you are creating a scrapbook, not a generic cookbook; therefore you need to infuse your album with personality. This is especially important if you are designing the scrapbook to give to a loved one as a graduation, wedding, or housewarming gift.
Include images of:
- The family member the recipe was handed down from
- Someone actually preparing the recipe
- The finished dish
- Fun shots of family members and friends chowing down on the tasty treats
The idea is to add as much character to your layouts as possible. This will make your pages much more meaningful than if you just include static shots of the cooking process or boring images of the finished product sitting alone on a plate.
Just as with aged recipe cards and newspaper cut outs, you can photograph or scan non-archival images onto archive quality paper. This gives you the opportunity to do some creative cropping without damaging your originals.
Journaling
Everyone has a recipe, but not everyone shares the stories behind a particular dish. When creating a one-of-a-kind recipe album, it's vital to include personal information and touches along with instructions on how to whip up delicious dishes that everyone in the family enjoys. After all, if you only include the recipes, all you are making is a standard cookbook. By journaling the personal stories behind the dishes, you make the scrapbook relatable to everyone else.
Consider including:
- An anecdote about the person the recipe comes from
- A special occasion the dish is usually served at
- Whose favorite recipe it is
- Comments from family members about the dish
- Ingredient variations and special preparation hints
- Personal notes about how the dish smells and tastes
- Humorous notes about any mishaps that occurred while you were cooking
Repurposing Embellishments
You can save a little money on your project by using leftover stamps, stickers, rub-ons, and die cuts, so you will be able to save big bucks constructing your scrapbook.
Some frugal ideas include the following:
- Use leftover embellishments from a birthday layout to decorate birthday cake recipe page designs.
- Save some stickers from a Hawaiian or Mexican vacation layout and use them to embellish recipes for tropical dishes.
- Extra holiday-themed scrapbook pages and embellishments can be repurposed on pages featuring favorite Christmas and Easter recipes.
- Recycle plaid paper or Tartan fabric swatches to embellish a Scottish recipe page.
- Add a few camping-themed embellishments from your vacation scrapbook to a recipe page featuring favorite grilled dishes.
Recipe Theme Book Ideas
If you find you have too many recipes to fit neatly into a single scrapbook, consider breaking up your collection in several themed scrapbooks.
For example:
- Create a book of one-pan, few-ingredient dishes that would make a nice gift for a young person moving away from home.
- Put together a scrapbook of healthy recipes to make a heartfelt gift for someone who has made a serious commitment to lose weight and lead a healthier lifestyle.
- Make a scrapbook with simple recipes for a child who wants to learn how to cook.
- Try designing one album just for all your favorite baked goods recipes.
- Gather all your favorite chocolate dessert recipes into one book.
- Grilling recipes are in a class by themselves, so why not give them their own scrapbook?
- Create scrapbooks for specific holiday meals, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and more.
- How about creating a book just for all the potluck dish recipes you've collected over the years?
- Dedicate a scrapbook to recipes that are traditional to your family's cultural heritage.
Recipe Scrapbook Kits and Embellishments
If you don't have the time or energy to come up with ideas, consider investing in a kit. Recipe scrapbooking kits are readily available in stores and online. You can find some exceptional kits and embellishments that make it a breeze to create amazing cookbook scrapbooks at the following sites:
- Scrapbook.com - You'll find an amazing selection in this shop's recipes and cooking section, including bachground paper, stickers, die-cuts, and 3-D embellishments for everyday recipes and holiday layouts.
- K8 Memories - This shop carries a nice supply of templates, adhesives and 3-D embellishments for your recipe, cooking and baking theme pages.
- A Cherry on Top - This shop sells the complete Cookbookin' Preserving Memories Recipe Scrapbook Kit.
Kits come in a variety of sizes from 4x6 to traditional 12x12 pages. Experiment with a few recipe card sizes before deciding on one that works for you, or consider mixing and matching to give your book an even more unique look.
A Really Useful Album
You're bound to have a good time putting your album together, and when you're finished you'll have a high useful keepsake. Whether you keep your scrapbook for yourself or make it for a friend or family member as a gift, anyone who sees your cookbook project will be impressed and inspired to put those recipes to good use.
