How to Decorate a Wooden Recipe Box

Under the lid of the recipe box sitting high on the shelf in your kitchen cupboard rests a treasure trove of heirloom meals and desserts garnered from books, magazines, and your mother and grandmothers own heads. These recipes not only bring your family together for meals, but can be a form of spreading the love through the community. Such important treasures on display in your kitchen, why a settle for a boring wooden recipe box with no flair?

It is easy to decorate a wooden recipe box to make it just as exciting and homey as the tastes of the food found within. To do this, all you need of various magazines, especially cooking and women's magazines, clear drying craft glue, scissors, water, a paintbrush, and a small bowl.

Since this small wooden box is designed to hold recipes, the first thing you probably want to do is identify it clearly as a recipe box. Search through various cooking and women's magazines for the word recipe or recipes written in attractive script or some other font you like the look of. Cut the word out leaving only a very narrow margin of paper around all sides of the letters.

The size of the wooden recipe box will determine the number and size of the pictures you need to decorate it. Turn back to the magazine's to find pictures of food, flowers, or other designs that match your kitchen decor. Cut these out, following the same rule of leaving only a small amount of paper around the edge. If the graphic or picture you are cutting out has a clearly defined edge, cut carefully directly along it.

In a small bowl, mix the clear drying craft glue and a small amount of water until you have an adhesive with a runny consistency. Use the paintbrush to lay a thin film of the glue water mixture on the back of the paper patterns. Before sticking them to the wooden recipe box, make a careful plan where you will put them all. Of course the word recipe should appear on the top or front of the box. You do not want the rest of the box to be too cluttered or it will not look very good.

After all the cutout pieces of paper are attached to the one recipe box, paint a thin layer of the gloom water mixture over the entire thing to seal it. Allow this to dry thoroughly between applications for a smooth finish.