Lets Spice Things Up

My Kitchen Tour post got some very nice attention and I got a few questions about those spice jars and canisters so I thought I’d get into some more details.

You may (or may not – I really wouldn’t blame you) recall that the large canisters are inexpensive Ikea purchases.  It was a simple matter of  spray painting the lids and creating the labels in MS Word.

I had shared the printable download for the labels previously and you can find it here if you’re so inclined.

The glass spice jars are from Griffith Laboratories and were made around 1939.  The company made the jars as a kind of advertising gimmick but they became very popular.  They were sold with various holders (wood and plastic) and the lids came in various colors to suit the current styles.The first jars had a baked on graphic for the label and in the following years the company switched to paper labels.

I had purchased a set with the baked on labels years ago but it’s pretty limiting as there were only, I think, 12 options.  My retro love does not extend to Celery Salt and it got really confusing to remember “oh the Celery Salt jar actually has cinnamon and the Dill Weed is really Cumin.”  Numerous, extremely unfortunate baking incidents occurred.  But the kitchen looked cool!

So when I stumbled across a set that had lost their paper labels I….went a little crazy.  It became one of those quests.  My family digs quests so everyone was looking for them wherever they went.  It was fairly affordable because the ones lacking their labels were cheaper and I didn’t care about the lid color.  Eventually I ended up with more than enough.

I cleaned and sanded the lids and then primed and painted them with a gloss red spray paint (sorry, no pics –this was quite a while ago).

I then recreated the label design by scanning one of my old-school jars and then erasing the spice name and inserting my own.

If you want to do the same just download this label sheet and then upload it into MSWORD. You can then use a Text Box (click on the pic for a larger, clearer screen shot)Format the Text Box to have no Fill Color and No Line

Then type in your desired spice name and drag the text box to center it on your label.

You may have to resize your text a bit and futz with the kerning but it’s pretty simple.  I used an Ariel Font but if you want to match exaclty play around with some of the free fonts at DaFont -I’m fond of Sugo myself.

Print a test sheet to make sure the size works for your jars and then print a final version out onto decal paper and cut them out.

And now I must go outside (it’s beautiful!) and cut HOME signs.

David

Recipe Card Holder Tutorial

My mom is a terrific cook and an awesome baker.  Our house and Christmastime was THE place to be if cookies were your thing (Never having met a cookie I didn’t like I spent  my holidays in a diabetic coma.  Ah the memories!). 

And while it seems that actual 3×5 recipe cards are going the way of newspapers, bookstores and the Dodo I still have a bunch that were handwritten by my mom and I wouldn’t trade them  for anything.

So, I came up with this recipe card holder that pays honor to my mom (the paper is a collage of her recipe cards) and keeps the cards up and visible while baking.  The tutorial is the latest in my series for the Amazing Amy over at Mod Podge Rocks.

So, if you’ve got recipe cards or want to make an easy gift for someone (you could make me cookies while you’re at.  Just a suggestion) cruise on over to MPR and check it out.

Just click on the picture for the link.

Free Kitchen Label Download

I think I figured out how to share my kitchen cannister label design that I used on my Ikea glass jars.

 

I realize they are pretty basic and some of you are probably thinking “Ummmm, dude?  You made a red circle with another red circle inside.  Don’t quit your dayjob” (too late I’m afraid).  But I hope that maybe they will save some of you a little hassle and make it easier to customize your kitchen. 

 Just click on the JPEG (below) to enlarge it and then save that version to your computer. 

 After that the possibilities are many. 

 You can just go ahead and print them as is. 

 You can open them into any drawing program and play around with color and size (they could be cupcake toppers or place cards or anything else you liked).   Or simply insert the JPEG into MS Word and go to town using text boxes to add the wording of your choice.

 If you want to match mine I used a Font called “Honest John’s” which is available for free here .

 For my canisters I painted the top with Krylon’s Fusion spray paint which is made for plastics and works great.  I then printed the circles onto Avery 8.5×11 label sheets, cut them out and slapped ‘em on the canisters.  This, of course, does not make them washable but they are easily replaced if needed.  You could also decoupage them on or, I think, use LaserTran transfer paper which I’ve never tried but it looks way cool.

 If you do use them I would really enjoy seeing the final result!

 And if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask.  It’s always hard to gauge how computer friendly people are and I may have skipped some key step.

 Best,

David

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linking Up To:

Kitchen Cannisters

As some of you know I live in a 1940 fixer upper house and I’m (slooooowly) fixering it up.

 Recently I remodeled the kitchen.

 Here is what it looked like before:

 And here it is post renovation.  I was going for a clean, classic style – in keeping with the house but just a little updated.

 I was happy with the results.  Except – see those glass fronted cabinets on the left?  So stylish, right?  Only afterwards did I realize that glass fronted cabinets mean that what is in them is seen.  And thus was born the canister project.

 My canisters for flour and such are from Ikea and they looked like this:

 

Which was nice but a little dull and, well, Ikea looking.

 Because I’m color challenged (not color blind mind you, color challenged) I wanted to keep things simple.  I had a red KitchenAid mixer and decided the canisters needed to be red to.

 

 

I whipped out my spray paint and painted the tops and designed a kind of retro-feeling set of labels and ended up with this:

 If you like the labels please let me know.  I hope to spend part of my weekend figuring out the bells and whistles of WordPress (thank you for your patience with my thus-far, primitive blog) and I’d be happy to provide free downloads of them that you could use if you liked.   

I’ve also been asked for a tutorial on the Architectural Coasters that I’d posted about and I’ll get to work on that as well so I could share some of the background textures with you.

 Have a very Happy and safe 4^th of July everyone!