Tuesday 24 June 2008

Finally I can show you....

I've been working on my only Niece's 21st Birthday present for most of the year. Today is her actual birthday. Happy Birthday, Leapy. The party was Saturday Night, at a night club in town.
This is my mother with her pink security wrist band, this is so she can get served at the bar.





Her present was a book of Gran's (my Mum) recipes. Now my mum is an amazing cook she can literally make something out of nothing. When we were growing up and there was little money, Peg was renowned as a gourmet cook. Mum left school when her younger sisters were born, at age 11. She went to work as a housekeeper. Both families that she worked for were very supportive and taught her lots. Her second family was quite large, the father was a doctor. They encouraged my mother to begin her Nursing Training at age 25. This was uncommon in those days. Mum loved nursing and it was how she met my father, an ambulance bearer. Thats what they were called in those days.



Back to the cooking. Peg had kept a hand written recipe book her whole life. It is a book that many people have contributed to. As we got older we were allowed to add our recipes. There are none written by me but I did find quite a few by one of my oldest school friends. When Elise and I were in Japan last year we got to talking about the book and how much fun we have had with Gran and the food she has cooked us.


In consultation with Peg we decided to make this book for Elise. I started to scan recipes and family photos. The pages of the book were so fragile that they were crumbling as I turned pages.It was going to be all hand done BUT the best laid plans often go astray. When I burnt my fingers I knew I would have to do use Photoshop. Not to worry just move on.
After printing out the recipes and laminating them (Oh my gosh that was a tedious job) I planned the rest of the book. I hand printed some hand dyed fabric with gold paint stiks. The background is Hot Pink, Elise's favourite colour. I've used one of my hand cut stencils and and a potato masher as rubbing plates.

I then squashed up some cling wrap and dabbed it in purple paint. At this point I thought I had stuffed it up. I decided It couldn't look any worse so I then used the stencil to print some red swirls over the top. The gold sparkled through, it looked amazing.

I'm being honest when I say that I expected the actual covering of the book to be a problem. Other than the odd school book its not something I've done much of. And I've never done it with fabric.

This is the front cover.

This is the inside. Each recipe has a photo collage, on the back the recipe is typed out. I kept the recipes as written originally by Peg. If they were in pounds and fluid ounces that is how they stayed. I did print out an conversion chart. The threads are my Hand Dyed Threads.

Elise was wrapped in the book. She got quite teary and so did a number of her friends. My work here is done!

1 comment:

Royce said...

what a great idea, i'd though of doing this several years back when my mom passed away to give to my little sister but never did. This has prompted me to hopefully get it started. Beautiful cover and very nice interior.