From My Kitchen to Yours: Recipe Journal

I just sent off this one-signature, vintage-style recipe journal that I made as part of a Facebook group swap. I'll be receiving one made by my swap partner as well. But I have to say that this one was hard to part with.

I used a fat quarter of 15-year-old Debbie Mumm fabric to wrap the cover. I wish I had more of the fabric so I could make something similar for myself. I also loved using Scrabble tiles for the book title.

I have subscribed to Cook's Illustrated magazine off and on for several years. The back cover of each issue has gorgeous images of some type of food. (You can see the lettuce and squash pages above.) I chose two pages and glued them together to make a cover for the signature. Perfectly vintage looking.

Part of the challenge was to make it easy for the recipient to add recipes to the book. In addition to the tabbed pockets inside the front cover, I added recipe-card pockets, printed recipe cards on the pages, added see-through pockets at the center of the signature, and a waterfall of recipe cards. Plus there are blank pages for adding even more recipes.

And, of course, added lots of retro kitchen and cooking images.

Well, except for the cover fabric and those specific Cook's Illustrated pages, I could probably recreate a version of this for myself. So many journals, so little time.