Illustrated Recipes - Snail Mail Club

A monthly illustrated recipe club by Jessica Jane.

Each month Jessica will create an illustrated recipe poster as part of her new snail mail club. These vintage look recipes will have a nostalgic look with her detailed ink drawing style. Developed from past loved recipes and her creative drive of making pretty food Jessica will share food and drink creations that are loved by herself, family and friends.

There are digital recipe options and physical A3 recipes posted as a letter. Add on tiers include stickers, mini prints and limited original art from recipe drawings. These tiers include video tutorials of the recipes and drawing time-lapses of the art creation.

The Beginnings of illustrated recipes cards

I’ve been nibbling over the idea of wanting to do a monthly patreon or snail mail club for a while now… I’m constantly inspired by artists I follow creating their own form of monthly subscription based collectables, wether it be a letter with an artwork, a sticker club, educational videos and so on.

So how do I enter this saturated area with a point of difference, whilst offering something different to whats all ready in my online store? I had a think about my interests and looked at themes that could come back to creating new art.

An activity I enjoy doing with my partner is baking delicious food and making yummy drinks with an emphasis on presentation and creating “pretty food”. As a creative person I find it fun to decorate and make desserts look appealing. For my 30th birthday i made a big coconut white chocolate layered cake and decorated it with marigolds, daisies and writing ‘30’ in chamelaucium flowers. For my partners birthday this year I spent a whole day making a saffron, brown butter candied pear cake, which again was decorated in flowers and fruits from our backyard.

Over the years we’ve gained a collection of seriously good sweet recipes that we keep coming back too and make for family and friends. Some recipes we tweak and make our own and others we play around with different toppings and switch up the food presentation. Something on our to do list for years has been to have a physical recipe book of our go to recipes.

And so the idea of illustrated recipes was born! I grew up looking at recipe picture books and looking through old cookbooks. The idea of drawing food gives me a different theme to focus on and appreciate, and creating recipes makes use of my design skills. My detailed, nostalgic ink drawing works well with this theme too as it caters to a vintage illustrated recipe look.

I have decided to dedicate a full year to creating a new illustrated recipe each month and once the 12 months are up I will make a decision on where to take it from there. There are a variety of tiers to choose from including digital recipe cards, physical copies of the recipe and more add ons like stickers, mini prints and limited original art from the recipes. I will also be creating video tutorials of the recipes and time-lapse videos of my drawings.

The first week of each month I will post the Illustrated recipe for that month, having advertised and had it available for purchase the month before. You can purchase as a one off or ongoing subscription. Have a browse at the tier options to see whats included!