Help - Drink Skewer

Guys… I want to make a drink skewer, but I’m terrible at design in inkscape and all attempts look like poor mutated worms. Please help! Don’t need anything fancy, lol, just want to surprise my husband while under quarantine! :slight_smile:

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Do you mean swizzle sticks? There are a few threads on them, and this thread has a file you can download.

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Swizzle Stick:

  • jargon
  • sounds outdated
  • 70’s stigma

Drink Skewer:

  • Could be your formal title, people don’t know
  • Sounds vaguely dangerous
  • Is a warning to other drinks

Drink Skewer: 3, Swizzle Stick: 0

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I’m actually a Drink Skewer, First Class.

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:joy::joy::joy: I almost died!!! Lol.

I need more of a skewer to keep the items in my Bloody Mary together. Think drink garnish tool vs. drink stirring tool.

We finally cut some basic ones that worked just fine, but will have to perfect the craft someday. :slight_smile:

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Here is the final product :wink:

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That’s not a drink, that’s a four course meal! Yummy

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:joy::joy::joy:

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Impressive…

Rough morning? :smiley:

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I work in healthcare and my husband the airline… it was a rough week :wink: lol.

Saturday’s and sunshine and bloody Mary’s just seemed appropriate!

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I was thinking the design was really amazing, but eventually realized I was looking at the asparagus, but having an asparagus tip design as the handle would be really cool.

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I have to add - needs bacon.

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Salami isn’t good enough? Pinning down crisp bacon might be tricky.

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I’m used to a beef stick in place of a swizzle stick, but I am from Wisconsin.

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I’ve never seen anything quite like that. I’m not a Bloody Mary fan, but I wonder what kids of regional differences are at play!

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It’s a thing… pics:
https://www.google.com/search?q=ultimate+bloody+mary&tbm=isch&bih=798

They even have festivals:

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I have no doubt it’s a thing. Just wondering how/if it differs across the US.

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So I can’t think of any higher purpose than to help make a drink skewer.

A drink skewer is just a pointy stick. So first make a stick. Use the rectangle tool to make a rectangle and then adjust the dimensions (red arrows.)

I entered 5.000 and 0.125 in the W and H boxes. Now we need a pointy end in case we need to defend ourselves and to impale the sacrifices. So first we need to turn it into a path so we can manipulate the nodes. With the rectangle selected go to Path → Object to Path. Click on the Edit path by nodes tool and then click on one of the end lines. This will highlight the two nodes at the end. Red arrow is the Edit path by nodes tool and the blue arrow is what you should be seeing.

Click on the Insert node into selected segment icon. The one with the plus over the square. The end segment will now have three nodes. With your Edit path by nodes pointer just select the center node. It should be blue and all the other nodes should be gray. At this point you can type a new number into the X box or you can use the arrow key to move the node to make a pointy end. You could drag it with your mouse but if you’re me you’ll wind up with a very sad looking spear.

You now have a functional weapon, but this is a party. So we’ll go to svgsilh.com as recommended by @evansd2 for some free svgs. We are in a global pandemic, so if you feel the need to fly the black, raise the Jolly Roger, go pirate, well do what you have to do. For today I’ll stick with a free file. Your husband works for the airlines, so I type in airplane and wind up with this one.

Well that is a bit large for our drink skewer. Or not, depends on how much you like your Bloody Marys. So first thing is to pull up the Fill and Stroke menu and set the Fill to None and the Stroke Paint to Flat Color. You can see that the starboard side engine has some unnecessary paths in it so we need to get rid of them. Depending on the file you may need to go to Object->Ungroup and/or Path->Break Apart before you can manipulate them.

Finding broken paths and cleaning up nodes in general is something you will do a lot when working with free files (and sometimes paid ones) - you get what you pay for. With the stupid nodes deleted. Pull up the Transform dialog. If it is not in a box to the right in your Inkscape you can find it under Object. Go to the Scale tab and make sure Scale proportionally is checked. Start shrinking it. I went with 15%

If you click twice on an object (not double-click, click once, then click again) you’ll get the rotation handles and you can rotate the plane into a catastrophic dive. Which is perfect for our objective: line up a wing with the non-pointy end of our drink skewer.

Select both objects and go to Path → Union.

And I did the same thing with a caduceus.

And here is the file (right click to save, doesn’t work with all browsers.) Remember that if you cut and use these you are under a giant moral obligation to post pictures of the drink.
Drink_Skewers

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@Caribis2, you are awesome. That is all. :slight_smile:

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