Preserving Family Recipes

My project today for DIY Design Studio is to encourage you to preserve those memories associated with family recipes.  Have you ever considered scrap-booking your recipes just like your photos?  The embellishment possibilities are endless.  Add personal photos or digital images.  How about fibers, buttons, pearls or Dew Drops, chip board, Scrabble tiles, ribbon...make the cards in your style or theirs!  Make a keepsake album or cookbook for yourself or as a gift. 

I recently took the time to combine my grandmother's, mother's and my recipe boxes.  I found there were several that were in all three.  Some were handwritten and some were typed and my choice was to keep the earliest handwritten version of each, even if it wasn't the easiest to read.   Could I have typed them into my computer's word or recipe program and made them easy to find by an index.  Yep.  I could also have scanned them in as pictures and stored them in folders.  That's actually what I plan to do with the finished cards so that I can share them with family.  But without the actual cards, I would lose a piece of the sentiment...the history...behind them.

 I chose to work with two Authentique paper pads.  Both Saucy and Fabulous have wonderful retro designs.  Since many of my old family recipes are from my grandmother and mother-in-law the patterns are perfect.  

Between the two paper pads, there are a few kitchen-specific themes.  Pictured above are pans & kettles, strawberries, aprons and utensils.  I chose a pink card stock because each of these four has a pink element in the paper.  I made the decision to permanently mount these three cards because there was nothing written on the back.  You could also use photo corners.  If your recipe card has a B-side, you could pop it into a clear sleeve or glassine envelope and have it flip up to access the rest.  I plan to photocopy any of the backsides and attach them to the back of the card.

For this recipe from my grandmother, I chose to put her picture on the front.  This is one of my very favorite photos of her and my mom and I.  This is one of those recipes that was in all three boxes and I thought a photo of the three of us was a fun nod to that.  I made a brief note about the photo on the back.  Two little gold glam stickers are on the front to give it a little tiny touch of bling.  Pretty, without being too fancy.  Gram would approve.  

This recipe from my mother-in-law is from one of the first family dinners that I was invited to!  I asked what she wanted me to bring and she handed over this chicken casserole  recipe that was a family favorite.  Now that she's gone, I make it with sour cream.  I can make that change now on my photocopy without altering her beautifully written card.  It's embellished with some darling ribbon and a charm that says, "HAND MADE WITH LOVE."  Absolutely fitting for the woman who was my second mom.  The picture of the woman cooking was cut out of another sheet of paper from the Saucy paper pad.

My mother preferred her cards typed and used to pull out her old 20 lb. Royal typewriter with the sticky keys when she found one that she wanted to keep.  Even in the full size scan, you can't see that there are two pretty big folds in the card.  I can't tell if it got caught in the box or just damaged while she was cooking, but just looking at the stains on it tells me it was one of her go-to recipes.  It's probably why I love short ribs now!  This card was embellished with a pink ribbon and more fun pictures cut out of the paper pad.

Be sure to scroll down so you can access full copies of each of the recipes.  Please use and enjoy the recipes!!  

Happy New Year to all of you party animals!

My mom used to use a saying "Putting on the dog."  It's not something we hear anymore, but Wikipedia defines it as an expression that means 'to make a display of wealth or importance, especially by dressing stylishly and flashily'.  And isn't that what we do when we get out our fanciest party clothes for New Year's Eve?  I took it just a tiny step farther with today's card.

This fancy pooch is ready to party!  You can find her on the Hounds collage sheet at the DIY Design Studio web site..  That tiara she's wearing makes me giggle whenever I see her.

The background paper and embellishments I used on this card are all shiny and add to the festive feel.  The clear florals were stuck on more of the same red paper and then cut out and layered.  The tiniest of them are attached with foam squares to give it more dimension.

Because it's New Year's Eve, I thought a clock would tie the theme together.  The Celebrate sticker sheet has a few beautiful clock designs.  You can even choose which clock hands to use.  All of these were layered with black card stock and scraps of patterned paper and collages cut into geometric shapes.  I added a couple of Dew Drop centers to the White Gold flowers.

And the words "Time to Celebrate!" make the inside of the card bright and shiny, too!  Just sign it with a gold gel pen and it's ready to give away.  Happy New Year to one and all!

Supplies used:
Celebrate and White Gold sticker sheets  and other fun gold glam designs
Red Satin Shimmer paper
Hounds digital collage sheet
Dew Drops and glue dots
Foam  squares and double sided adhesive tape
Card stock

Happy Halloween!

I love this time of year!  I know for a lot of people Halloween means decorating their home inside and out, but for me it is a great time to make spooky art.  DIY Design Studio has several fun Halloween collages for your art projects.

Both of my cards started out with plain card stock and a piece of punchinella.  Green ink with green paper and white ink with black paper...just to give the blank space a little texture.

I used a strip of washi tape for a background element but a strip of scrapbook paper or a piece of ribbon would also be great.  I just wanted something fun behind the main collage image.

I added a few highlights to the Halloween damsel with a white gel pen.  There is shading on the pumpkin eyes and noses.  And tracing around the skull and crossbones on her cloak and the grid on her dress really make them stand out.  

A few Dew Drops make a nice dimensional highlight.  

For the card below, I used the washi tape again and also added embellishments to the skeleton's crown.

Be sure to come back again soon for another DIY Design Studio project!  Happy Halloween!

Halloween Pocket Page, part two

As promised, I have the flip side of my altered pocket page for Halloween.  For this side, I used all black and white collage images from Altered Pages.

In my first post for this project, I told you how I try to blend in the white edges of the paper with ink on color collages.  The rule is not as hard and fast with black and white images. Sometimes you need a fine line of paper around the image to make it stand out.  If you layer all black and grey images without the little "halo" you might not see everything.  

As with the color collages, paper matters.  I used white paper for everything on this project.  I like black and white images for Halloween because they somehow just feel spookier! 

A few bookmarks with Prima

I've been making a lot of bookmarks lately.  Every year I like to give a token gift to my co-workers for Christmas.  Last year it was plastic candy canes full of candy and this year it's going to be bookmarks. I'm making a lot of them so that each person can choose a design that they like best.

All of these bookmarks came from one paper pad by Prima.  It has designs in several earthtones so they all play really well together.

There are pages in this Prima Life Time paper pad that have tiny elements and they work beautifully on small size projects like bookmarks, tags and ATCs.

After matching up backgrounds to color card stock, I tried out several layouts on each one until I found the looks that I liked best.

The images below are in sets of two.  Each bookmark in the photo has the same background paper.  I posted them together to show the different looks you can get using the same set.

A little mixed media

This week I have been playing around with color.  Fall is inching closer and Michigan will be a flood of reds and golds in a few short weeks.  I love Fall colors and that's what I've used on this canvas.

I started with a layer of gesso.   Right after the layer was complete, I dipped my brick stencil into the wet gesso to leave an impression.

To better show the texture of the dried gesso, I smeared on a few light spots of Gelato to highlight the ridges.

The entire canvas was covered with Dixie Belle's Grunge Glaze.  Since I was going with a Fall theme I felt like the brown in the glaze would be a good fit.

The glaze interacted with the Gelato and gave me some different undertones.  Gelatos are water soluable so they are activated with paint just as easily as with water.

I chose a few more Gelatos that reminded me of fall and used my finger to apply them in random spots on the canvas.

Now to add some fun texture!  Punchinella is a great way to add dots to a background.  You can sponge or paint over the surface.  This time, since I was using Gelatos I chose to lay down the ribbon and wipe over the top with a baby wipe to remove some of the pigment.  This lets the spots remain the same basic color as the surrounding area.

I made sure the ribbon was going in a couple of different directions so that the spots would be random.

At this point I sprayed the canvas with a fixative to keep the Gelatos from reactivating in the next stages.  The gesso was still out so I dipped a paper tube and a pencil eraser in it to add circles and spots.  Gesso is thick so these are slightly raised.

A little water was added to the grunge glaze to form drips.

Our paper towels at work have a gear on one end to go on the feeder.  There was an almost empty roll on the counter so I rescued this little piece of plastic and used it here to create these gear circles in the copper Art Alchemy paint.

I applied a few patches of a white pearl paint with my fingertip .  They look really white in the bright light at this angle.  At other angles you can barely see them.  I like that effect!

These letters are from a tag alphabet.  I have them just laid on the canvas right now because I am thinking of adding more layers to it.

Supplies Used:

Your choice of canvas or art journal

Gesso

Dixie Belle Grunge Glaze

Gelatos in your favorite colors

Punchinella

Spray Fixative

Art Alchemy or other acrylic paints

Tag Alphabet