Family Heirloom Recipes on a Towel

Yes folks, this must be the most awesome Christmas gift idea I've run across in years.  I am so stoked to make these for all the women in the family.  I collected family recipes from my great aunt and grandma, my brother's wife's mom, and my husband's grandma, and then scanned them into my computer as a color PDF file.  Next I opened them in Picasa without having any luck, and eventually had my husband help me work on them in Adobe CS5.   That worked out much better for me than Picasa, but it helps to have someone who knows how to use the program.  I don't know how to use CS5 at all, so my husband has to walk me through every step.

When you first open it up and choose "new," you will be asked what dimensions and at what resolution you want your file to be.  This is tremendously helpful, as you need the collage to be 54x36 inches.  I set my resolution to 300 pixels per inch.  That's a pretty high resolution and will work out great for this project.

On your right, you should see where you have your background layer listed.  Currently, it should be your only layer.  You'll want to make it a pretty color that compliments your recipe card, if you want the hemmed edges to have color to them.  Do you see the two boxes of color just above the layers, one overlapping the other and slightly above and to the left?  Double click on the one on the left, and move your cursor around on the color box until you like the color.  Hit okay, and then on your toolbar (mine's on the far left of the screen), choose your paint bucket.  Click on your plain white image, and it should fill with your selected color.

Now it's time to begin adding the recipe photos.  Choose "File" and then "Place."  Choose your first recipe.  It will be too big when it first show up, so hit SHIFT and then drag the corner until it's the size you want it.  You can also drag it around to one of the four quadrants of the image, so that you'll be able to fit four recipes on the same document.  When you're satisfied, click the checkmark.  By the way, if you don't hold down SHIFT while resizing, you will find that the recipe's dimensions will get distorted.

Place and resize your other three recipe photos the same way, and then you're almost done.  I'd make the border just a little thicker than you think it should be.  I made the mistake of making mine too narrow, and it was a real pain to hem.  Just keep resizing (SHIFT and dragging the corners of the picture) until it looks right.

If you want to switch from one photo in the collage to a different photo within the collage, here's what you do so that you're able to grab that second photo: Click on the correct layer on the right side of your screen and then hit CTRL T.  Every time you resize or move an item, make sure you click on the checkmark to finalize the movement.

Want to see some yummy family recipes? Yeah, I thought so. May I recommend Nan's Sugar Cookies, as the most awesomest cookies on the planet? She made them every easter, cut them into rabbits, iced them with white icing and then piped a pink trim. Ah, those were the good old days. Love and miss you, Nan!

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