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At sundown on December 1st, Hanukkah begins. I thought I'd make a little menorah of my own for Template Tuesday. I tried to pattern it after traditional Jewish papercutting. I hope I didn't do their craft a disservice.


According to wikipedia, here is the origin of the holiday:

From the Hebrew word for "dedication" or "consecration", Hanukkah marks the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem (Second Temple) after its desecration by the forces of the King of Syria Antiochus IV Epiphanes and commemorates the "miracle of the container of oil". According to the Talmud, at the re-dedication following the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Empire, there was only enough consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate fresh olive oil.

This one is a folded cut, so it's half as much work, but this still took me about an hour to cut, so expect to be spending at least that much time with your penknife.
Download your free scherenschnitte hanukkah template: Hanukkah

So, maybe this Template Tuesday is on a Thursday. Semantics. The gauntlet was thrown at me on Tuesday and I had to pick it up (thanks Johnny for making me jealous that you were going elsewhere). I've mostly been lazy AND I've been needing to do a commissioned cut for my friend Marie and I've got papercutters block and I don't want to do anything else until I get hers done. But, I guess it's better to do something than nothing at all. Which brings me to this:


The Mayflower! I was trying to think of something Thanksgivingy to do that wasn't too corny and I thought of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and how they would be PERFECT to do and then I remembered that those were from when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. I had to think for a bit what famous ship the pilgrims sailed over on. And that is how this Mayflower papercut came about. As I was cutting this, I had no clue what year the ship sailed in and so I did a little research and found out it was 1620. This got me all excited because I came to realize that I would probably (hopefully) be alive in 2020 (which will just be an awesome year anyway) and I hope to have an amazing 400th year Thanksgiving birthday party. I wonder if the country will do anything special or if anyone will care? I think it's care-worthy.

Anyways, if you want to do the Scherenschnitte of the Mayflower, click here: Mayflower
Here's what the template will look like. I hope I've got another thankful one in me for next Tuesday.