Grandma's Recipe Kitchen Art (2024)

I was lucky enough to find one of my Grandma’s handwritten recipes which I’ve been able to turn into some art for our kitchen.

Hi, I’m Julie from Sum of their Stories back today to share a really personal project that I was able to make to be part of a gallery wall in our kitchen.

We moved house a few months ago so as you can imagine, I unearthed LOTS of things that we’d not seen for years. A lot of this stuff went in the binor to be recycled but in among the rubbish I did discover a few gems. I founda couple of my Nan’s hand written recipes (I even found one in my Granddad’s writing, I guess he was her scribe that day!) She’d written this Apple Cake recipe on the page of an old address book – she really was an original “waste not-want not”kind of lady, raising her children in the post WW2 rationing years. You can also tell that she was not especially neat and tidy, these are genuine grease marks and fingerprints, there was even a light dusting of flour!

The funny thing is I can remember her making this cake, feel free to give it a try (if you can read her writing) – it’s good.

With such great memories attached I wanted to do something to display this little bit of my family history. I’d seen a few DIY art idea on pinterest made using plastic cutlery and kitchen bits and pieces and when we’d had some lovely red plastic cutlery at a lunch event at work mine had foundtheirway into my bag (can I just make it clear it was the ones I’d used to eat my lunch – I washed them up.I don’t condone stealing from your work place!)

To turn this family recipe into art I used:

• My computer and scanner
• A sheet of good quality A4 paper
• ColouredCard (mine is red as my kitchen has red accents)
• An IKEA RIBBA (23 x 23cm) Box frame
• Plastic cutlery
• A glue stick and Strong PVA glue

I scanned the recipe and then printed it out, enlarging it to fill a sheet of good quality A4 paper. This means I didn’t spoil the original.

I trimmed the red card to fit the box frame then trimmed the recipe to a square a fraction smaller. Then I simple glued the recipe onto the card, this was where I used the glue stick.

I played about with the cutlery arrangement until I was happy then I used the strong PVA glue to attachthe cutlery.

I weighted the cutlery down until the glue was dry, sadly no photo but I just useda row of mugs – heavy enough to press them down but not so heavy as to break them.

Once the glue was dry I popped the whole thing into the box frame and hung it on the wall. I did hold my breath in the morning in case the cutlery had fallen off but no – all is well!

I love how this has turned out, everyone who comes into the kitchen asks about it. Best of all it was REALLY easy. If you don’t have any old handwritten recipes then this idea would work with pages from an old recipe book, or just right click on my Nan’s recipe and copy and paste hers – she would have been delighted to share with you!

This forms part of a “growing but not yet finished” gallery wall in our kitchen, the good news is the picture I made a few years ago with Coca Cola labels actually matches now. I’ve added our UK coin and Scrabble name pictures too, basically if it’s red it’s in.

Thanks for having me here today.