Recipe Idea Box by Elsie Flannigan

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Reported by Nancy Beyer

The Love Elsie recipe Idea Box, published by KI Memories includes 100 "recipe" cards for layouts with designer tips, index and color coding. The "recipes" are divided into art, home decor, books, fashion, music and movies.

To put it plainly: I adore this extremely inspirational and original "book".

Her "book" is seriously an amazing concept. She has captured the heart of what we paper crafters like to do: gather inspiration from our world, with or without kids. I so wish Elsie Flannigan would create more books like this because her ideas are truly unique.

I found the best way to use the Recipe Idea Box is to go through each recipe and examine which one you would like to do and create two piles: Pile A:I must do these layouts RIGHT NOW! Pile B: Okay, I can wait a bit on doing this layout because either I don't have the right photo, or I really need to think about how to do this layout.

After going through these cards, I found out that my pile of "I must do this layout right now!" grew to 30 cards! I basically wanted to do every Movie and Book idea. I would have chosen more art, fashion and home decor cards but neither my closet nor my house was in any shape to be photographed. The hardest idea cards for me were the music ones. I was never the one to listen to the words of a song, hence I really had to think about how to do those layouts - not that I didn't want to do them, these layouts were just going to take me a bit longer than usual.

As you can most likely imagine, I had the hardest time figuring out which layouts to do because - as I said - I had a stack of 30 cards begging me to be scrapped and limited amount of time to complete this article! I settled on my favorite subject - movies.

"The Early Years"
Sometimes we all get in a rut with pictures. The best part about these inspirational idea cards? One can take a trip down photograph memory lane. I found pictures that I forgot about or never saw that were quite literally older than me. Also, the cards give you ideas on what type of pictures you should take for these layouts. When you get in a picture or "no scrap mojo" rut, these cards will pull you right out of it!

Here is my version of this Recipe idea: Your inspiration is to take a romantic movie quote and create a layout with buttons and doodling. Mine was, "You had me at Hello" from Jerry Maguire.

Paper: Sassafras Lass Serendipity"Sunshine Lollipop" Sugary Love, Fruit Slice Land. Embellishments: Stickers: Creative Imaginations Narratives by Karen Russell Antique ABC, 12x12 Quote Cardstock Sticker Sheet Buttons and folder vintage. Ribbon unknown. Zig Silver metalic marker

Remember, the idea cards are created on the concept of a recipe - cooking time(estimate on how long it will take you to complete the layout), ingredients (what embellishments, paper etc. did the layout use), recipe (how to do the layout) and a Designer tip (or hint/inspirational note on how to make your layout dazzle).

How I "read" the recipe was by first looking at the inspiration (i.e. the designers tip), and then I did the "recipe". I only reviewed the "ingredients" when I wanted to know what specifics about an embellishment. Personally? I would have liked the order to be Designer Tip first, Recipe second and than Ingredients last. However, I understand "why" it was edited this way - and let's face it, the whole idea around this is to find inspiration and to learn new techniques. In regards to the cooking time, I took longer than usual but that is due to the fact that I sometimes get lost in the layouts details.

Back to the layout, I located a great engagement picture of my parents that needed some cleaning up. Since the tint of the photo was way off and was very hard to clean up electronically -I decided to mimic it in the paper. Per the instructions, I tucked another picture behind it - but I went off instruction and included a more recent and bigger photograph behind the first picture. The doodling aspect was fun and I found this challenge very inspirational.

That is why I love Elsie Flannigan's style - it is the details that make the project most fun.

Pros:

• Cards are easily portable, I took them to work and read them on the train! :) (Hey a working girl has to squeeze her scraping time in somehow!) Also I really like the fact that these can be used at crops. I don't know how many times I feel like I am taking my whole craft room with me to a crop - these idea cards makes your plan for your crops!
• The book delivers - every "recipe" is inspirational.
• Love the whole concept of an "idea box", I wish Elsie would make more of these types of "books".

Cons:

• One out of the 5 designers featured I couldn't quite understand what her inspiration was behind the "designer tip".
• I would have preferred the layout of the recipe cards to be - "Designer Tip", "Recipe" than Ingredients but I can understand why they chose to edit the book this way.
• An instruction type of card at the forefront of the book would have been extremely helpful. Basically a "how do I use this book" type of card.

This item retails for $24.00 USD and is at times hard to find. You will have the best luck at finding this book at a high end local scrapbooking store (CraftFancy, ScrapInStyleTV.com and Archivers.

Do you have this product? Let us know what you think. What are your tips and tricks for making it work? We can't wait to hear from you!