wonderland revival

I recently did something I never thought I'd do.

You see this book?

This poor tortured book?

I had bought it in this terrible condition, enthralled with the illustrations (though despising the condensed, dulled version of the text) and have been holding onto it for years.  I'm a sucker for hard luck stories, and I'll take home every ripped up, abused, and broken book I find.  I try to rescue these orphaned books and give them the love and care that they so obviously did not have with their former owners.  I like to think of myself as their savior and protector, a guardian angel to mishandled books everywhere.

Which is why what I did last week is so shocking.

I don't know what came over me.  The fact was the book wasn't going to get better and, frankly, the text was seriously shoddy and skewed.  I thought, instead of having this half book gather dust on my shelf, not to mention suffer the indignity of  yet another move, why not give it a new life?

So I did.

The Man's cousin married had herself a wedding last weekend and, embracing my husband's tradition of giving a recipe box as a gift, I salvaged as many pictures as I could to make dividers and to spice up some recipe cards.

The divider cards were mod-podged onto printed card stock to give it some weight.

Though, I did find the glue made it a bit wavy, so the whole lot had to spend the night under a stack of heavy (but less abused) books to flatten them out.

Of course, I couldn't just put the cards into any old recipe box.  I had to make a rabbit hole.

You may recognize the fabric, I've used it several times before for Smootch and Birdie's clothes.  It is lightweight, and seemed held the glue well.

Really, the whole fabric box was an extreme mod-podge experience, including odd make-do types of clamps.  Crafting perhaps not at its finest, but, at least for me, at its most usual.

But I like it.  I even bought another box so I can do the whole thing over again for myself.

My favorite part?  Besides the revival of some fantastic Alice in Wonderland illustrations?  Well, I'm feeling pretty pleased about actually being able to incorporate some of the the wedding invitation into the box, on the inside lid and here on the bottom.

All in all, I am surprised to find I am not feeling much remorse about my dissection of the book, seeing as it was already doomed and now it has a new life where it can be appreciate everyday.  The wedding was beautiful and I hope the bride an groom get some use of of the box and enjoy the illustrated recipe cards.  Food is elementary to us all, and I believe that it should be a wonderful experience from the very beginning, even when the meal is still just an idea, a sift through the old recipe box.  In fact, I'm so very much in love with the decorated recipe cards I've started to turn a predatory eye towards several other damaged discards...