Kitchen Art Tutorial

We’ve lived in our house for a little over 4 years now, but I’ve never been satisfied with how I’ve decorated the space above my cabinets. A few years ago I got the idea that it would be fun to somehow use antique and vintage cookbooks in the decor, so my mother-in-law started looking for the as she visited thrift stores and garage sales. She gradually built up a good collection for me, but I just couldn’t figure out how to take the picture in my mind and make it happen in my kitchen (that is, without spending a lot of money). I’ve been so inspired by all the beautiful homes I get to take a peek into (thanks to blogs), that I finally decided it was about time I did something. I figured it would be neat to make some plaques/signs, but didn’t want to buy the supplies in case I didn’t like the results. So instead, I made signs from cardboard to see if, in the long run, I’d like them.

Here’s one of the final products:

And now for how I made it:

I cut a little more from the box I used to make my fall wreath. I cut one large piece, and one smaller piece.

Then I took one of the cookbooks my mother-in-law found that just wasn’t quite old enough (1974) and tore some pages from it. It’s a Whitehouse cookbook, so there were a lot of old recipes and presidential food facts in it. (I thought recipes as a background would be fitting since cookbooks are my theme.)

Then I Mod Podged the recipes onto the cardboard in different directions.

My kitchen walls are white (thanks to not knowing what I wanted to do with the space when we moved in and pure laziness since then), so I needed the boards to have a little color to them to stand out off the walls. I added a little brown paint to the Mod Podge, which ended up giving it a cool antique look (kind of like old newspaper).

I googled “kitchen quotes” and found one phrase that I liked, and chose to just put “Eat” on the second sign. First I sketched out the look I wanted on a piece of paper, and then when I went to trace it onto the boards, I didn’t like the way I was spacing things, so in the end I just free handed it. I’m always so much happier with my work when I just go for it rather than try to think too much :). After painting the words on, I hot glued red ribbon around the edges to give it a more finished look. In the end, I’m quite pleased with the outcome!

Maybe one of these days I’ll actually paint my kitchen, buy some boards and make permanent signs! (This sign is being held up with masking tape. I tried using the 3M tabs that are amazing… but either ours are too old, or the cardboard bends a little too much, or our paint is weak, but they just couldn’t stick. Yay for good ol’ masking tape!)

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