Preserve Memories with a DIY Photo Album Recipe Book #CanonPIXMA

This is a sponsored conversation inspired by the Canon PIXMA MG7120. All thoughts and opinions are genuine and 100% my own. For more information on the new Canon Wireless Inkjet Photo All-In-One printers, visit usa.canon.com/pps.

The closer we get to the holidays, the more nostalgic I get for the good old days. When I was little, the holidays meant gathering with family. I remember my Gramma N’s Christmas parties and how us cousins would all take turns sneaking into the dining room to nab one of Gramma’s homemade candy strawberries or get a taste of our favorite homemade fruit leathers. Gramma’s house was always a fun place to be whether it was a holiday or not.

When I was trying to decide what to give my cousin this season, I thought about the few old recipe cards I have from Gramma. I remember her writing each recipe down and handing them to me for my recipe box, so long ago. Since I’ve teamed up with Canon this season, to share how easy it can be to preserve our everyday memories, I thought it would be fun to use my Canon PIXMA MG7120 printer to create a little DIY Photo Album Recipe Book for my cousin and I to enjoy as keepsakes.

My cousin and I spent many days learning how to cook, digging through Gramma’s old jewelry boxes, sewing or just looking through the endless pile of photographs. This little recipe book is just my little reminder to her of how much fun we shared at Gramma’s house growing up!

How-To Make a Recipe Book Out Of a Photo Album

To create the mini photo album recipe book, I gathered up a few of Gramma’s handwritten recipe cards, as well as several cherished old photos of Gramma, myself and my cousin. I wanted to preserve the originals so I used my printer to scan the index cards into images.

The MG7120 made scanning those old recipe cards and family photos into my computer a breeze. I set the printer to auto multi scan and was able to scan several cards at a time into individual images — so much quicker than scanning single cards at a time. This was a huge timesaver! You can use the MG7120 to multi scan up to 12 images, if they’ll all fit on the scan bed with ¼” in between! I also set the printer to scan directly to my Pictures folder whenever I scan or upload photos so my scans were easy to find. The scanned images came out crisp and clean — perfect for creating the graphics and images I had in mind.

To dress up the old recipe cards, I used a few vintage images from thegraphicsfairy.com blog, along with some pieces that I created myself.

Besides the photos and recipes, I added a card with Gramma’s favorite saying — “If it is to be, it is up to me.” Another card reads “Always Keep your chin up” — I remember Gramma often saying that phrase to me, as I was growing up and trying to get through the hard times in life. One more card has the words Shoop-shoop-shoop on it — which is a silly inside joke that only my cousin and I will get ;-)

I have always loved this photo of Gramma in her work gear. Gramma was an extremely hard worker and after Grandpa passed away in the early 80’s she just kept on working all the harder. She worked in a dirty factory but she never let it get her down and she always took pride in her work. She kept herself busy and made do or made without…. or made it herself! She was a truly inspiring lady and I think my cousin and I learned a lot from her.

I printed the cards for my cousin’s book on glossy 4″ x 6″ photo paper and they turned out beautifully! I ran out of the glossy photo paper after printign my cousin’s recipe cards, so ended up printing the cards for my recipe book on sheets of matte photo paper then cut them to size — they also turned out perfectly. Which paper you use is just a matter of personal preference — they both look nice and neat.

Printing all of the recipe cards was surprisingly quick, the MG7120 is no slowpoke — I didn’t have to wait very long for the printing to finish up. Once all of my cards were printed I slipped them into the pockets of the mini photo albums. You could use any 4″ x 6″ photo album but I really like these mini plastic ones I found at Wal-Mart. They are very affordable at just $1.00 each. Plus, the covers slip in and out to make the front and back easy to customize — exactly what I needed for this project.

To cover the plain binding plastic binding, I attached colorful ribbon around the inside and outside binding with glue dots. I almost added a little hangtab with ribbon and hot glue but decided to keep it simple.

What do you think?

While I chose a few of my favorites from the old recipe cards that I have, my cousin must have some favorite recipes from Gramma as well. She can add them to her book using the blank recipe cards that I made with edited images of the original scans. I thought they turned out really cute, so here is a free recipe card printable for your own use!

Just click the image below to go to the full size printable, I hope you like it! They’re kind of grungy retro :)

After having such a fun time creating my mini recipe books to share with my cousin, I’m thinking of other ways to make the little photo albums into personalized gifts using my MG7120. Maybe I’ll make a “Through The Years” album for each of my kids, or an album for my Mom with photos of the grandkids.

What would you print up to customize your own mini album?