Vintage Fork Recipe Card Holder

My good friend Shelley received the neatest recipe card holder at one of her wedding showers, and I have always loved it. I've never seen another, either. But then I googled something like fork recipe card holder and found this blog. Amy and I were excited because we thought this would be such a unique (and easy) gift to make and give to someone (and something we could do over here).

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Amy is always brilliant and suggested we practice on a cheap fork before bending a vintage silver plated one. I found some old pieces I keep around for Mr. YH to take to work, got out the pliers and went to work. The first turned out all right, but it just didn't seem quite like Shelley's, and I vaguely remembered hers having the outside tines bent back and the middle two left to hold the card in place. She was gracious enough to send me photos (thanks friend!!) and sure enough, that was the case.

My next step was to find a fork I liked on Ebay, buy it, and then wait a few weeks for it to get over here. It arrived this week and after a little polishing, it looked like this.

I used masking tape around the tines to help mark the place I wanted to bend the tines as well as to protect the finish. In hindsight, I should have put some felt or something there, too. I didn't take any other pictures for a tutorial because I think if you see the finished product, it is pretty self explanatory (and Carmella did a great job on her blog). Also, tines are different lengths and you'll just need to play around with each fork to get it to stand the way you'd like it to.

I'm pretty pleased with the final result

and I only waited 13 years to have my own!!