DIY [clipboard]

If you've seen the clipboard inspiration I shared last week, you can understand why I've had the bug for ages. It's a simple and creative starting place for many functional projects, and there was one in particular that stood out in my mind.

Last Thanksgiving, D and I traveled to Copenhagen for a few days, prior to joining my study-abroad-participating sister, M, in Berlin. On our second day in Denmark, we had the incredible experience of literally stumbling into Ruby, consistently listed as one of the top ten cocktail bars in the world (!!). A parting gift, which we've treasured greatly as a souvenir, is an antiqued clipboard with a typewriter-printed drink menu, from a private event held in the underground heart of Ruby. We have it proudly displayed on our bar cart, and every time I see it I get a thrill of memory.

I knew I could add a DIY element to my brother's gift of bitters (this set and this set, totally worth buying) and Boston-etched cocktail glasses (over here) with his very own clipboard, complete with recipe cards using his 8 new flavors of bitters.

I'm sure no one is surprised that I immediately turned to my two most utilized DIY tools, contact paper and gold leaf. I chose a Gatsby-esque font in Word, and traced the letters onto contact paper using this technique, which I then cut out and attached to a $2 clipboard from Office Depot (not ideal, but time was of the essence). I taped everything I didn't want to be gold, and painted the rest gold, including the hardware. Strip off the tape and you're masterpiece is revealed.

Since I'm now doing a cocktail post every Thursday, I'll share with you the recipes then. A few are extremely creative uses of the unique Scrappy's flavors, but I think bitters are just as wonderful dropped into unflavored seltzer.