Oscraps

This year was the first year where both my girls are not living with us. They are in school in Denmark and live together in an apartment. For Christmas, my husband and I are traveling to them to have their first Christmas in their home. For most of the year, I’ve been receiving messages from them (at all hours of the day) on “How do you make your lasagna, Mom?” or “What’s in your broccoli salad, Mom?” So I decided I would make them a cookbook of our family favorites. It turns out that it will be a series of books as I really didn’t have enough time to do ALL of them. So this first one is one with our most favorite dishes!

Most photobook printing companies print in variations of the 12×12 proportions, so you could do your layouts in that size. I knew I would do mine at 8×8. Whatever the case, you need to make the page 1/4 inch larger for the bleed, or the area where the company cuts the page. So, for 12×12, it should be 12 1/2 x 12 1/2 and then make sure you put 1/4 inch guides all around.

Wendyzine has a toolkit for this:

Create your pages in similar way to your regular photopages. Just make sure all your images and text fall into the center of the page and not on the edges. Also, create back and front cover pages.

Tips for doing recipe photobooks:

I ended up creating a 20 page soft cover book from my local Wal-Mart for about $15 each and it came out wonderfully! It was fast and easy as I didn’t have much time to send it out.

When you create the pages, plan the layouts to be left side and right side so that they go well together next to each other. You want to plan the font and the design to blend well.

I did upload the pages online and then picked up the physical book from the store but you could have it shipped to you if you had the time. The upload itself was pretty simple with a preview set up so you could see if there are problems.

The Oscraps designers have many fun kits that work well with cookbook designs. I used our (ViVa Artistry) own as well. Check the Shop by Theme>Theme/Occasion kits>Foodie or run a search with the keyword cuisine, food, or cooking.

I am super excited that I will be creating a series of these books for my girls. But I also am planning a cookbook with my mother’s and grandmother’s traditional recipes. I realized the last time I was at my mother’s house, while going thru old boxes, my grandmother kept a series of notebooks with her recipes. I realized my mother is not getting any younger and I don’t make ALL her dishes and have NO IDEA how to. What a book that would be for my kids!