Making a Barbeque Recipe Book

This month’s papers strongly suggest celebrating the 4th of July and for us this means food, so I decided to use the From My Kitchen Cricut cartridge to make a recipe book. I used Moxie Hometown Celebration line (Star-splangled, Grand Ol’ Flag, and Patriotic Patchwork) so that everything in the book matches everything else. The recipe book has three parts – covers, dividers for different types of food and recipe cards. It was easy to put together. The description that follows seems complicated but it really is not. The only challenging part was figuring out what size to cut the pieces.

For the front and back cover, I cut two 5" X 6 ½" pieces of chipboard. I covered the edges with blue ribbon so the edges would be finished. After I finished the edges, I adhered paper to both sides of each cover using a glue stick and a brayer. Using the Cricut, I cut the title “Barbeque” and “Recipes” from dark blue Bazzill cardstock.

I cut six dividers using the same cardstock as the title using the Tabs Feature (2 each of mixer, blender and toaster; 4 ¼”). Each divider has a title on the divider and on the tab of the divider. For the title that goes on the divider itself, I cut the words using the Cricut from the same cardstock as the dividers. The cartridge offers several options. I used drinks, appetizers, vegetables, meats, breads and sweets. To make the titles stand out, I cut an oval shadow for each using the Cricut. The oval shadows and the tabs (3 3/4”) were cut from matching paper. I used a label maker to make the title to go on the tab. For some dividers, I added some stickers from the Moxie Hometown Celebration sticker set to decorate them a bit more.

I printed the recipes on My Mind’s Eye American Made “Patriotic Picnic” Paper. I printed five recipes on one piece of paper by using Microsoft Publisher so I could turn some sideways to fit more per page. They were cut to be 3 ¾” x 6” . I cut a recipe card overlay for each recipe (Tab Feature Key, Shift & Cookie) from one of the Moxie papers and glued to the recipe card. In printing the recipes you have to work around the shape of the recipe overlay.

There are a few ways that you could make this project a little simpler. Two involve the recipe card overlays. The simplest way would be to not use any recipe card overlays so that your recipe card would just be a rectangular piece Patriotic Picnic paper. Another alternative is to use recipe card overlay that is rectangular. The cartridge offers several options. I used an overlay that has a circular cutout on one side requiring formatting the recipe to avoid this spot. Another option is instead of printing the recipe on paper and then cutting to match overlays, you could simply cut a recipe car and stamp lines on it for handwriting recipes.

After punching three holes in all (cover, dividers, recipe cards), I put We R Memory Keepers blue eyelets (large) so that the holes would withstand use. After putting book in proper order, I strung all items tan twill ribbon from Scrapbooks Plue and tied in a knot and then a bow. You could also use rings but I liked the look of the ribbon.

It will be great in the future to have all the recipes I use for barbequing in one place so that I don’t need to look through a bunch of cookbooks. It would also make a nice gift for a housewarming or bridal shower.

Saige Barnett, who was visiting my house, for the 4th of July holiday helped me with this project. She did lots of assembling and holding.