For reasons I don’t care to share with you (because I’m Venomous that way) the formerly semi-regular “Tippling Tuesday” thing around here has been on an unannounced hiatus. Until now. Now — again for reasons I don’t care to share with you but upon which you’re welcome to speculate — I’m re-instituting the practice.

Oh, okay, fine. I’ll confess why it’s back: VH bought a damn fine bottle of wine and I made a damn fine appetizer to go along with it. Which — in case you happen to work in law enforcement — is not to say that I’ve actually consumed booze, m’kay. Just sayin’.

Anyway.

In the past whenever I’ve sent VH to the store to buy liquor he’s made his selections based on two and only two things. The brand I asked for? Oh, hell no. I’m high maintenance, baby. His buying criteria come down to whether a bottle of hooch looks more expensive than it costs. Also, whether it costs less than $20. As you can imagine those criteria mean that I’ve swilled some pretty awful stuff in my time.

See, the thing is that one can manufacture rot gut in one’s bathtub — assuming one lives in a county that allows such things — and as long as one slaps gorgeous double-sided, high-quality artwork labels on it, one can charge far more for alcohol-laden bathwater than for the good stuff.

Which is, incidentally, why I’m thinking of putting my garden tub to use as a still. Because, in all honesty, the majority of uneducated booze buyers make their selection based on the attractiveness of the label, never having tasted a drop of what the bottle contains.

As you might guess, this means that I have a rather nice selection of artistic labels carefully peeled off of cheap booze that mostly went down the drain. And that, in turn, means that I now have a nice stack of carefully preserved, beautifully rendered labels that I need to put to good use.

I’m thinking decoupage. But is that passe?

What do y’all use those too-good-not-to-save labels for?