\Author: Stacey Kingman

So much of our lives are centered around food. Everyday meals at the dinner table, birthday celebrations, hot soup for a sick friend, nourishing meals taken to a family with a newborn...food gives us so many opportunities to connect, to nurture, to actively show love and communicate caring.
The new recipe card stamp set from Fiskars has wonderful images for creating recipe cards, tags, and labels to make sharing delicious food even more special. I used the stamps to decorate a recipe box full of recipe cards ready to be filled with yummy recipes. I also used the stamps to make two gifts of food just a bit more special and memorable by creating a crafty recipe tag for one and a recipe card for the other.

Recipe Box Instructions:

1. Cover an old (or new) recipe box with patterned paper. If necessary, remove the hardware. I measured a strip to wrap around two sides, cutting carefully at the corners with the Retractable Fingertip Knife to allow easy folding of excess paper up around the top edge of the box. I used the Easy Squeeze Glue Gun to adhere the paper. The Easy Squeeze Glue dries quickly and adheres large pieces smoothly. After covering all surfaces of the box and lid, I sanded the edges lightly with an extra fine sanding block. Replace hardware.

2. To embellish the sides of the box, I punched 14 Large Block Party squares and stamped Recipe Card images on several of them. Adhere with Easy Squeeze Glue around the bottom portion of the box panels, alternating colors and images.

3. The lid is embellished inside and outside. For the outside, I used a blank recipe card, signed my name, and lightly sanded a variety of black alphabet stickers I had left over from other projects. Sanding the letters kept the box’s “title” consistent with the slightly distressed look.

The inside of the lid has a 3” X 5”rectangle cut from lined paper and stamped repeatedly with the “Family Recipe” image. I punched the corners

with the Admission for One Corner Squeeze Punch.

4. Create recipe cards by cutting cards to fit inside box – in this case, my cards are 3 ½” X 5 ½”. Round the top corners of each card and stamp “From the Kitchen of” near the top, leaving room for the recipe title. I also stamped the “Recipe Rating” image at the bottom with spoons.

Create category dividers that are slightly taller than the recipe cards. Use the Extra Large Round ‘ Round Squeeze Punch to make tabs for the dividers. Stamp a category at the top of each tab and the corresponding

food image on the lower part. Adhere with the Tape Runner.

I left space in the upper middle to machine stitch the circle tab to the divider. If you don’t want to sew this, you could use a stapler, brads, or just the adhesive.