As always, life took over the end of this past week - but I'm finally here to share the little cookbook scrapbook I recently completed . I'm still an avid scrapbooker and it's one of my favorite hobbies. Besides working on my own family scrapbooks, through the years I have also made several scrapbook gifts and keepsakes for family or friends. I have done completed kinds of scrapbooks; like the heritage scrapbooks I made for my Grandma several years ago. Those scrapbooks contained family photos and journaling already completed in the books.
But a more common scrapbook I have often made (for a baby gift or wedding gift) is the pre-decorated kind. One that is ready-to-go (so to speak) and is decorated for someone else to add their own photos and do their own journaling. I think any gift like this is nice to give because it feels like it comes right from the heart. Not only is it a handmade gift, but it's also often times personalized specific to the person I was giving it to; where I would include something related to their specific likes or personality on the decorated page.
I was going through my craft room the other day and I had some recipe cards on hand and a blank 8x8 album and I thought it would be neat to use both and create a little scrapbook.
First of all I decided to embellish the plain burlap cover with some lace and a burlap flower.
Then I often like to have a dedication page - or something similar. I often have even made this kind of spot hold a folded piece of paper in a full sized envelope that a person can open and pull out to write their message. Like a love letter of sorts. I think it's so nice to have a place to personalize a sweet message for the recipient of the gift. Part of the "from the heart" stuff, right? ;) On this dedication page I embellished with a tiny little envelope I made and added a little message sticking out as a cute nod to that page being a spot to write a note for the recipient.
Then I proceeded to make pages decorated with the cards - so someone could write down favorite treasured recipes to give as a gift to someone. For some pages I included just the front of the recipe card - for shorter recipes. Each page is in a plastic sleeve so it's protected from getting anything splattered on it.
Other pages I included the front and back of the recipe card for longer recipes.
Since the pages weren't very big, the recipe cards took up the majority of the room. So I just added some fun small embellisments, most often cooking related. Some also floral to go with the floral recipe cards.
The full book includes more pages then these, obviously, but I figured you would get the idea. ;) I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with this album. I already have a cookbook scrapbook for Annie to give her one day. I am either going to save this as a gift to give someone after I add actual recipes in it. Or I am still thinking of setting up an Etsy store that would include items like this for sale to buy. Full sized and smaller albums like this that are already decorated and ready to be a gift from the heart. I would do several different themes as well. I also have other paper crafting kinds of items like jewelry with papercraft items on them, pre-decorated individual 12x12 scrapbook pages, potentially some homemade cards?, and also little pieces of canvas art that would include vintage jewelry on them. I will let you know if I get this store going! Enjoy the rest of your weekend. xo
I'm linking with Scrapality for Scraptastic Saturday.
