Kerri Bradford Studio: Recipe Binder

Happy Monday my friends! I have some unhappy news, if you haven't seen or heard already. Kerri Bradford's website was hacked this weekend, which I know has to be an infuriating thing to deal with. So for the time being, she's decided not to put her site back up, and is focusing on getting her new site up and running very soon. I had a project that was scheduled to go up today, so I'll be sharing it here in full for you all. 

I've been on this kick to get random areas of my life organized and in order, and one of those areas was the kitchen. Mainly, my recipe binder. I've had a binder in one of the kitchen cabinets where I put recipes that I print from online websites. They started out slightly organized, and then I got to where I would just shove papers in the binder, or yank them out and lose track of them.

I figured if I prettied up my binder, it would motivate me to keep it in order. My plan was simple. Create a divider page for each section of the binder that would be slipped into a page protector, and name each section as well. 

I started out by cutting a circle background for each divider page. I think anyone that knows me and my style knows that I LOVE circle backgrounds. I decided to use the background cut file from the Life Additions: Background kit, as it could be sized to fit most of the 8.5x11" page.

I knew that I would just need to add some paper strips along the side to cover the remaining inch and a half that the circle background didn't cover. I picked out 12 different patterned papers, in 6 different colors.

I went with tone-on-tone patterned papers to keep them on the simpler side, so that my die cut words would stand out. I ended up picking out some older papers, from Making Memories, Echo Park, and I think My Mind's Eye (I'm drawing a serious blank right now). 

From each patterned paper, I was also able to cut the strips of paper to add to each page where the circle background didn't cover my white cardstock. 

I relied heavily on Kerri's Tasty kit to label my divider pages, adding in one extra word from the Lazy Days kit. Once I jotted down what my sections would be - appetizers, salads & sandwiches, pasta, chicken, beef, etc - I then wrote down one of the descriptive words from Kerri's kits to go with each.

I sized each word to fit on the circle background part of the divider page, and cut all of my words from a few sheets of dark brown woodgrain patterned paper.

I had a package of white tags laying around, and decided to use those on each page to write the rest of my section descriptions on, but Kerri has some really fun tags in her Attach It kit that would be perfect for this too.

I was really close to digging out alpha stickers to spell everything out with, but in the end - as much as I'm not a fan of my own handwriting most of the time - I did decide to just hand write the rest. 

As for inside the binder? I simply punch holes in recipes I've printed out and add them into the binder, as opposed to slipping all of the recipes in page protectors.

I find a lot of great recipes on Pinterest, and I've found that when you print some of those recipes out, there's no photo of what it is the recipe is for. And I like photos, so I know what I'm trying to make.

So I will usually right click and save the photo off Pinterest, or the website where I get the recipe, print it out, and adhere it to the backside of the printed recipe. I should have taken a few photos to include here, but really, it's pretty self explanatory. 

For the front of the binder, I cut a circle background as well, but because the front of the binder was larger than my divider sections, I used the Background Basics kit so that I had a large background to work with. I love the "food glorious food" cut file from Kerri's The History Project class, and cut that from the same dark brown woodgrain patterned paper to add to the page. I slipped that right into the slot on the front of the binder. Easy peasy.  

Comments

[Michelle]

Love it!!

[Silvia Barrera]

Wooow love it Laura!!! I will do mine!!!!

[Barbara]

I love this idea - I used to college cookbooks (I still have all of them) but now I will print a recipe from the internet. I too have shoved them in my cupboard. I think I'm going to have to take time and put a binder together and just keep the ones that I would make again. Thanks for the idea!

[Gilda]

This is a great idea, Laura! The pages are lovely.