Crafty Party Stirs

Recently I was asked to help plan a bridal shower. The hostess wanted small hand made touches to make the party special.

For this shower, I found these stirs online and decided to make my own. In looking at the stirs my first thought was 'ribbon' although the tutorial uses the vague term 'craft paper'. Sounds like its time for a trip to the craft store!

Left Finished Stirs.   Right Top: Paper stir.   Right Bottom: Ribbon stirs.

Here's what I did...


 This was an internal war; super simple ribbons or time consuming craft paper. For the ribbon stirs (bottom right) I purchased regular curling ribbon for wrapping gifts in the shower colors. Ribbon became even more appealing when I realized the sparkly colors available and while it was a temping to buy lots of metallic colors I decided instead to to limit myself to using metallic silver ribbon in lieu of white for half of the stirs. For these stirs I simply cut a length of ribbon, tied them to the top of a kabob stick, and curled with a scissor. For each stir I used three 8” lengths of ribbon and tied them to the stir separately. Ta-Da! (Tip: I found that tying the second and third knot around the first helped strengthen it) 

Now, the craft paper stirs (top right and left). Walking through Michaels I found a wall of Recollections cardstock 12”x12” paper sold by the sheet. The paper was fairly ridge and thick which concerned me, but ended up being perfect to hold the shape of the curl. Additionally some of the papers had a slight texture (the green) and others had a slight sheen (the white). I made over 40 stirs using the craft paper and didn't go through more than one sheet of each color.

To make the stirs I used an exacto knife to slice the paper into strips. (If you're lucky enough to have a paper cutter, I'd highly recommend using it.) I varied the thicknesses between the 1/4” and 3/4” range to try and add a little interest. Once I cut the strips to the width I wanted, I would cut them in half so each was 6” long. These strips I curled around a pencil. I found I could curl the strips around the pencil at different intervals to produce loose wide curls and short tight curls. (Nerd Alter: If the curls were a sine function, this would be the period.) To attach the curls to the kabob skewers I used elmers glue and placed a dot on the end of each curl before wrapping it around the stick. I often found that the different curl sizes allowed the three strips of paper to start with a slight overlap which help them adhere to the stick. The stirs could be placed in a cup to finish drying after only a few seconds of holding the glue in place.

I found that I liked the paper stirs the best and made a majority of those, however after several hours I decided to finish up by quickly making a bunch of ribbon stirs just to be sure we wouldn't run out. The total number of stirs I aimed to make was twice the number of guests invited.

The last step was to cut the stirs to length. Before doing this, check the length of the glasses you plan to use them in. For my stirs I started with 10” kakob skewers and cut 2” off of each. Remember, you want to keep the ribbons/paper out of the drink, but they also add extra overall height. To cut the skewers I used wire cutters and sanded the ends slightly with sand paper. The wire cutters got the job done, but sometimes they would start to splinter the sticks which is the last thing would want to put into your drink. Let me know if you have a better method for cutting the kabob skewers. My next best idea would be to find a tool with a serrated edge.

Summary:

I enjoyed this craft and found it added a nice personalized touch to our party. Using the craft paper to make the stirs will take some time, but is worth it in the end. I think this would be super cute to use at superbowl party or tailgate in your favorite team's colors.