Dutch Oven Cookbook Mini Album
This dutch oven cookbook mini album is what I’ve been working on lately. It turned into quite the adventure as I chose to do this album almost exclusively with the Silhouette machine, and my poor old Silhouette decided it was not going to cooperate with me any more. Nearly three years of heavy use is taking its toll, I think.
If you followed my conversation on the Silhouette Plus forum you may already know the details, but basically my machine needed some maintenance, and in the end I had to borrow my friend’s Silhouette SD to finish the project. Thank you, Louise! Every stage took much longer than it should have with a machine behaving normally. The good news is my Silhouette seems to be working fine again now.
This album is going to Heartland Paper as a design team project. Here are the inner pages:
When I accepted this assignment, these American Crafts papers and brads just called to me. Very outdoor-sy, appropriate for dutch-oven cooking. But I couldn’t find any kitchen or cooking embellishments! Fortunately, I knew I could find some shapes for the Silhouette machine to cut. And I had already downloaded this tabbed album shape a while ago from the Silhouette store. (I don’t know where else you can buy an entire mini album for $1.)
So I did a free dingbat font search and was able to come up with almost all of these food and cooking shapes. I used DJ Kitchen, Food, KR Kitchen Dings, and LCR Kitchen Dings (links below). Everything else came from the Silhouette store. Oh, and the peach I designed myself.
I’ve posted a tutorial HERE on turning these kind of dingbat fonts into cutting shapes. Nearly all of them needed some compound-path making and releasing. A few shapes were not “closed” and needed an outline drawn around them. And many were too detailed to cut, so I found the sketch pens to be perfect for that.
Here are some detail shots. You can see some silver metallic pens and black glitter pens in use, plus a lot of edge-inking going on!
Another advantage to doing a recipe-book mini album in this style with the Silhouette is the pages are able to be laminated. Other than the brads, this is a flat album and if you really wanted to bring it along on campouts to cook with, laminating to protect it would be a good idea.
I should mention the photographs on the album pages all came from our neighborhood dutch-oven cooking class we started in May. The recipes with before and after photos came from the cooking classes, and the rest of the recipes and tips mostly came from Great Meals Dutch Oven Style by Dale Smith.
Come back later for my tutorial on turning dingbat fonts into great cutting files!
Supplies used:
- Pattern paper: “Campy Trails” by American Crafts
- Fabric Brads: “Campy Trails” assortment by American Crafts
- Cardstock: Bazzill
- Bind-it-All by Zutter
- Fonts: Mool Boran, Calibri
- Dingbat Fonts (free online): DJ Kitchen, Food, KR Kitchen Dings, LCR Kitchen Dings
- Silhouette Shapes: album with half round tabs (ID #7314), Dutch oven and fire (ID #8161), 1-page layout kit (ID #7982), Apron shape card with utensils (ID #8935), Apple and banner (ID #18564)
What a fabulous album you made! I am truly in awe of this – what a treasure it is! I have wanted a cast iron dutch oven for ages, and your cookbook is so beautiful that you've created a real heirloom! You have such wonderful ideas and the way you carry them through to completion to surprise and delight is a gift.
What an amazing job you did!!! My interest was definitely peaked since I have a silhouette and just getting into dutch oven cooking.
Kelly, this is the most fabulous album I've ever seen.What detail. Every page is a real looker. I love it!!!
Can I just say, WOW?? This is the most fabulous cook book I've ever seen, just fantastic!
Hugs, Lori m
What an awesome idea and you carried it out so well! All the diecuts look "yummy".
You really did a wonderful job.
Can't wait to see your tutorial on using dingbat fonts.
~Teryl
Thanks, everybody! I'm glad it doesn't look good to just me after spending so many hours on it. Sometimes I talk myself into liking something the longer I look at it. 😉
Wow. That is quite the project. I'm glad your Silhouette went back to working normally.
Great project and inspiration! Loved this idea. Even shared your site on my blogged.
Have a great week!
ucanorican.blogspot.com
WOW! What a great recipe book. That was alot of work. Love it!
Karen
I love this album Kelly!! My husband loves his dutch oven too! In fact on our most recent camping trip he made us deep dish pizza on the campfire in the dutch oven! I would love the recipes you have in this book. Thanks for sharing! I'm loving your blog and all of the tutorials also, Thank you so much.
~Hugs~
Becky
http://www.squirlygirlcreations.blogspot.com
This is awesome, Kelly! Thanks so much for sharing it with me. Love all the little details.
I just found your site. Amazing! I loved the word sweet you cut out but when I checked the fonts listed I couldn't figure out which one it was. Can you please let me know? Thanks! Diane
Diane, the word "sweet" is from the Silhouette store. It's included in the "1-page layout kit C00425_20509" that also has the cherries. I wish I knew what font the designer used to create it!
Diane, with help from Kay at Clever Someday (what a great blog!), I've discovered that the name of that font is called Cosmic Cursive.