Cocktails and Crafts - Paper Cutting and Pina Coladas

Paper cutting is an art form found all over the world. The Japanese have Kirie, Indians have Sanjhi, German and Swiss have Scherenschnitte and the Polish practice the art of Wycinaki. (Thanks Wikipedia)

Paper Cutting Supplies:
Two pages of contrasting card stock paper
Fingertip craft knife
Template
Cardboard to cut on
Spray mount adhesive
Patience

When deciding on what cocktail to make I went for the alliteration and choose the Pina Colada for a nice summer afternoon.

• 1 1/2 oz light rum
• 2 oz cream of coconut
• 2 oz pineapple juice
• 1 cup crushed ice

Pour rum, cream of coconut and pineapple juice into a blender with one cup of crushed ice. Blend until smooth. Some people actually buy garnish and if that is your cup of pina colada, then go ahead and add a slice of pineapple and a maraschino cherry, and serve.

My garnish-free pina colada.

There are templates you can find free online for paper cutting, one great site I found was called Scherenschnitte. After looking at a couple I thought I would try and make my own. I found vector images online (for free), added a black border around the image and then removed the color from the main image. What we were left with were a nice outline to cut out. I had four different levels of difficulty with one being the easiest:

1. Simple single letter monogram in a not-too fancy script
   
2. Outline of a bird sitting on a wire
3. Falling feather
4. Koi fish

Being the gracious hostess, I allowed my guest to pick and being the over achiever she is, she of course opted for the koi fish. Ohh nelly - here we go!

I am not what you would describe as a patient person, so this craft was hard for me! I have to say that the Fiskars Fingertip Craft Knife was a must have. I picked mine up at Walmart for about $4.00. I didn't take too many close-ups because as you can see from this picture I wasn't doing too great a job staying in the lines.

After we were done cutting them out (about an hour and half later) it was time to mount them. Just a quick touch of spray mount adhesive and we were all done. To help cover up some of the less-than-perfect lines we flipped them over which is probably what you are supposed to do anyways, but at the time seemed like a stroke of genius!

Mine is the one on the black paper and my friend Sarah's is the green. As she so accurately proclaimed by the afternoon - she was born to paper cut!

I definitely would need a lot more practice on this one before really loving it, although I might try some grandkid silhouettes for Christmas.

Funny side note: When I told Kevin what the craft was for today he looked at me like I was nuts. I think he envisioned just shapes or maybe snowflakes. I am going to cut out some circle and snowflakes and show him that when he gets home and see his reaction.