Sneak Peek at Rose Page of Stillroom Book

Recently I posted about starting my stillroom book. One of the issues I discussed is I do not want just page after page of recipes taking up all the available pages in the book. I came up with an alternative I want to share with you. I am going to include envelopes that slip in to the protective covers, that I can put recipe cards, recipes clipped from magazines, etc. in.

First I found an envelope that was the right size.

Then I just gently unglued the edges, spread it out and traced it on the back side of the paper I chose to make my envelope from, and cut it out.

Then it was just a matter of marking or noting where the crease were and folding it. Take the side triangles to the middle to meet and then fold the bottom part and then the top flap. I used glue to seal the bottom fold to the two side folds.  I reached inside the envelope and reinforced it with a bit of tape. You can use old calendars, pretty pages from old magazines, left over stiff wrapping paper, just whatever you want to make these envelopes.

I will label the envelopes with a list of recipes in each.

I had fun starting some pages this week. I started with Rose as she was my primary ally last year and I have a lot of information I need to get sorted out anyway.

This first page, I cut out a piece of cloth, a remnant from a sewing project, as the background, and glued it to the page. Then layered it with lace and ribbons. I cut the word rose out of some scrap paper and then covered the letters with the same fabric, adding a button for the center circle of the letter O. I sewed the button on.

Since the flowers, hips, seeds and roots are all valuable parts of the Rose, I will be addressing each separately. I have started with the flowers.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I want to include brief-ish herbal monographs for each plant. (You can see my dots of glue on the page. It hadn’t dried yet when I took the picture. I recommend a glue stick instead of actual glue, but Lily had used mine up, so went with what I had.)

I have never been a particularly crafty person, so this is really appealing to a me as something that doesn’t take any special talent! lol! You can get fancy and buy a bunch of special scrapbooking paper and embellishments, heck, on a web search of scapbooking ideas I was blown away by the digital layering you can do if you want to go in that direction. You can use gorgeous old photos from magazines, old beat up unreadable books, wallpaper samples, or whatever you can think of and make a really pretty book with just odds and ends, without spending a young fortune though. It’s all up to you, it’s your creation. I will continue to share with you as mine develops. I just thought you might help me celebrate that I finally got started! :)

Now who says there isn’t anything herbal wise to do in the middle of winter?!

Big Herbal and Honey Hugs to all who visit Comfrey Cottages xx