Making My Own Recipe Cards

I wanted to make an easy way to access recipes that I use a lot without having to have my cellphone (where I already have a recipe book with all the recipes I've liked) out in the counter while cooking. The first thing I did was print the recipes and put them in a binder like book but it was just too burdensome and intrusive so I just continued to use my phone.

I hadn't even considered cards until just recently when I saw it in a youtube video (even though there's already a recipe box in my house).

This is how I made my own recipe cards.

The tools and materials I used where:

• Box with a lid to put the recipes
• Computer
• Software for making the cards
• Printer paper
• Printer
• Laminator
• Packing paper for decorating the box
• Color paper
• Permanent marker
• Stamps

Most of the material are optional the only thing you really need is a box and cards of the size of the box.

The first thing I did was look for cards that were already sold with a template for recipe writing. There were but then I realized that since I already had hundreds of recipes on my phone and it was going to be a pain having to transcribe them to paper. Another issue that I had was the size since some of the recipes I have a pretty long so I would have to write in a small letter which is a little annoying.

So I decided to search for a template online, so I could print them. I settled with Canva and I choose a pretty simple design. I edited to my liking and exported it.

Then I got on Affinity Designer to tweak the design even more and also change the size so it would be appropriate for the box I already owned.

• You could use any software you want or have in hand like Adobe programs, Canva itself or you could probably use microsoft word.
• As you can see I settled on a pretty simplistic design for a couple of reasons. I didn't want to add any images so as to not waste printer ink and I wanted it to be easy to read.
• When accounting for size I also had to take into consideration the fact that I'll laminate the cards so I need them to be a little bit smaller so they'll fit in the box laminated.

The next thing to consider was the categories of my recipes and how many dividers I was going to need to make.

I spent some time in a notepad organizing my recipes until I found my categories. I assigned color to each one of them so I could make each card according to its category.

I also spent some time arranging the recipes in the document so it would be optimal use of space and I wouldn't have to waste that much paper. I ended up with a configuration of 3 recipes in normal size and a little much smaller one that I would use for really simple recipes.

Knowing how many categories I now could make the dividers.

I could have also made them in the computer and printed them but since there were not that many I made them by hand.

1. I grabbed some color paper sheets that were the same as the colors I choose for my categories.
2. I measured (taking into account the laminating) the size they would have to be and cut them. Mine ended up being 14.8cm by 9.6cm.
3. I took care of letting a piece of paper on top for the tab where the name of the category was.
4. Then I decorated the paper with stamps related to cooking.
5. I drew straight horizontal lines every 0.5cm to have a place to write the recipes that each category contains.
6. I laminated them*

*I laminated the cards before I wrote anything in them since I knew I would make mistakes and maybe some day I would want to add a recipe or even remove one and I didn't want to be blocked form doing so.

I used a permanent marker to write form outside the laminate and if I want I can easily erase it using isopropyl alcohol.

Once I had my recipe cards designed I started the migration process from my recipes document to the recipe cards template.

• Be sure to adapt the cards to the size paper you are using to print. I'm using letter size.

Since I decided to laminate the recipe cards I printed them in printer paper.

• If you don't want to laminate then it's better to print in a thicker paper like cardstock.

After printing I cut them to size and started the laminating process.

Since the box I'm using is branded I'm going to cover it using packing paper and a water and glue mixture. Depending of the surface of your box it's a good idea to sand the surface of it.

1. First I cut strips of the packing paper to size.
2. Create a mix of water and glue in an approximately 1 to 1 ratio.
3. Dip the strips in the mixture and apply it on the desired surface. In however many layers you want.
4. Let dry and decorate however you please.