Giraffe Birthday Cookies

Hand Painted cookies are some of my favorite cookies to make, they are also often the most challenging.

When my wonderful co-worker asked me for a set for her daughters 20th birthday I was thrilled.
Her only request was that I incorporate giraffes some how.

Giraffes you say... no problem!  I loved making this set, not only did I get to hand paint some fun cookies, I also go to work on my flower piping and did some stencil work as well!

Check out the whole set, doesn't it just give you warm fuzzies!  The mamma giraffe and baby were by far the favorite of my co-worker and her daughter.  

Below you will find close ups of all the individual cookies.  

These little mini cookies might just be my favorite of the set.  I love the color combo and how whimsical they look.  

Finally the silhouette cookie.  Silhouette cookies are quickly becoming my favorites.  I really like how they turn out and once I have a stencils for them they are super easy to make.  At the moment I hand cut each of the stencils I use.  But I now have a giraffe stencil so any takers for some super cute giraffe cookies?

Hope you enjoyed the overwhelming cute!  Stay Sweet Everyone!!!

Lorax Baby Shower Cookies

It is so nice to see how timeless Dr. Seuss and his stories are.  I have had so many requests for Dr. Seuss as of late.

This set was made for a lovely local gal for a baby shower she was throwing for her friend.
I loved making this set, airbrushing the Lorax as well as the Truffula Trees really helped add to the whimsy of this set.

The book covers gave me a great chance to use my fun new americolor food coloring markers.  I love these guys, they are so vibrant!  I got mine from Global Sugar a few months ago and love them! I highly recommend adding a set to your cookie/cake decorating arsenal.

The all time best part of this set was the delivery, the lovely lady who ordered the cookies was an acquaintance form high school.  It was so much fun to sit down and catch up over a cup of coffee.

Hope you all enjoy this set as much as I did.

 Stay Sweet Everyone!

j

The Journals of Thaddeus Shock Pocket

I am so excited to share this next set of cookies with you!  Not only because they were a blast to make but because they depict the fabulous books from Local Mankato Author Henry L. Walton!
As you all already know I love reading and I love sharing the joy of reading with others.  Let me tell you Henry Walton does a wonderful job of sharing the joy of reading with young and old alike with his Thaddeus Shockpocket series.

If you haven't read the books yet I suggest you go out and do it straight away.  They are an absolute joy a fun and funny steampunk type adventure though a fabulously created world.  Oh and not to mention there is lots of fun art scattered thought the books.

This set was made in celebration of the second book release in The Journals of Thaddeus Shockpocket series.

I am still working my way though Albion 77 unfortunately I can't decorate cookies and read at the same time.  But I have been assured by the authors wife that the 2nd book in the series Victoria is even better than the first.  I can't wait to read it.

 If you aren't intrigued yet he is a brilliant review form Amazon that basically sums up how I feel about theses books

 "Okay! This book is the most fun I have had in months! The author uses matter of fact hilarity to tell his story. Eight year-olds would love the stories, though they would not be independent readers with it. Fourteen year-olds would love the scientific inventions (I would love to hear if they pick-up on the invention of the internet!) Anyone over sixteen or eighteen will love the word play. As a teacher, I would read it/teach with it from second grade onward. It is fantastic from cover to cover! There are so many ridiculous and incredible stories--so many are so subtle. I cannot wait for future journals to be published. I am curious to see if Thaddeaus follows up with his experiments watching paint dry....is there more story line with that????? Yours in Friendship and Distance...." 

I figure since the books are all about adventure why not make the cookie making process an adventure as well.  I learned a lot of new things making these cookies, like how to airbrush in a gradient.  How to use corn syrup to make parts of the cookies look like glass, and how to make holographic cookies using stencils and multiple layers of airbrush sheen.

The cookies above are the "holographic" cookies.  If you look closely you can see a few different layers of gears.  I used a warm brown, gold, copper and bronze color in different layers to get the effect.  

Check out this quick video to see a bit better how the whole effect turned out.  

These cookies truly were a labor of love, a good hour or two went into each of the book cover and back cookies.  The results in the end were totally worth it, but let me tell you my hand and wrist will not miss painting all those fine details any time soon.  

Just to give you a bit of an idea here is the comparison between the book covers and cookies. 

Well that's all for now.  I will have one more book inspired set coming your way later this week and then on to other exciting cookies. 

Stay sweet everyone!

Hoppy Spring Busy Bee

I have been a busy Bee as of late, making lots of fun cookie sets that I can't wait to share with you all!   Up first is a fun 2 cookie set I made for a local garden center.

The folks at Drummers are amazing, they are so helpful and knowledgeable.  The cherry tree Hubby and I planted in our wedding ceremony came from Drummers.  

If you are in the Mankato area be sure to go and check them out, they have a wonderful selection of plants, trees, pond supplies and little shiny baubles to place around your garden. 

This cookie above combines two of my new favorite decorating toys, first don't you just love the birch stencil, it is so dreamy....

and the gum paste bee!!!! I am going to start putting little bee's on everything because they are so darn cute!

Because spring has finally hit Minnesota I decided to do some cookies to welcome in spring!  This set was gifted to one of my loyal customers who I made this set for.  She had given me some cookie cutters to use for the set and I totally forgot to return them. 

I figured when returning something late you better have a nice gift to go with it... thus the spring themed cookies.

This Bunny is my favorite, and take two, the first one met its sad end when it fell to the floor along with a whole baking sheet of finished cookies.

Oh well I guess that's just the way the cookie crumbles. 

That being said it is sometimes fun to start over, it gives you a chance to fix mistakes you made on the previous cookies or to try something new.  

Over all I am very happy with how all these cookies turned out.  

Happy Spring Everyone!  Stay Sweet :D

Forest Themed Baby Shower Cookies

I always love making a set of cookies where I have free creative reign.  This set was an absolute joy to make.  I was given a theme and a price range to work within and this is what I came up with.
These cookies were for a baby shower and the theme was forest...from there I got to run with it.
I got to try a few new techniques on these cookies and am excited to try them again.

The first new technique I tried was an antique china crackle technique.  You can find a brilliant tutorial from the brilliant sweetambs.  I changed up the technique a bit because I didn't have fine enough petal dust to go into the etches I made.  On the first cookie pictured I made the etches extra deep and panted on the petal dust with a wet brush and then rubbed off the excess with a damp paper towel.  On the second cookie pictured I did lighter etches (which the petal dust didn't stick in very well) glazed it with corn syrup, let the corn syrup dry over night and then etched that again and added more petal dust.  This application seemed to work the best, the petal dust stuck in the etches made in the corn syrup.  If I do this method again I think I will only etch the corn syrup and skip etching the icing.  

The next technique I tried was making "moss" covered cookies.  I followed the wonderfully simple tutorial by Mike at Semi Sweet I opted to add the crushed up graham crackers to wet icing instead of letting it crust over (Like mike suggests) because I was concerned with the crumbs flaking off.  It worked perfectly.  I added some dimension to the cookies by adding a second layer of icing to the rabbit ears and tail and the squirrel's tail.  The finishing touch was to add cute little bow-ties to these topiary critters.  

Finally I did a reverse silhouette cookie, nothing fancy just a cut out of two adorable deer, sprayed over with a gold.  I am thrilled with how easy these were and how elegant the cookies turned out.  It is a technique that I will be revisiting some time soon.   

The following are a few closeups of each of the individual cookies.  What are your thoughts on this set?  Are there any new techniques out there that you want to try?

Hand painted toadstools and a  dapper topiary bunny 

Close up on those happy toadstools

Airbrushed tree with glittery gold heart leafs

Some spotted toadstools

Hand painted owls with gold detail and the china crackle birds

The whole set together on a nice wooden platter

Hope you all enjoyed this set.  Now go out there and try some new cookie techniques.  Let me know how your experiments turn out. 

Stay sweet everyone!!!

Holiday Baking

Better late than never right?  Between moving cities and starting a new career I still had time for a few cookie orders.  I had a lot of fun with these sets and had a chance to put my airbrush to good use. Up first is warm and cozy mitten themed set of cookies.

This set included fuzzy warm mittens, shiny bronze stars, wreaths, trees and a few hand painted winter scene cookies. 

Doesn't this set just make you want to curl up in front of a fire place with a cup of coco for dipping the cookies in?

Now that you are all warm and cozy how about a fun romp out in the snow.  The next set included snowflakes, hand painted winter scenes, and a few trees for good measure.  

The snowflakes were an assortment of airbrushed snowflakes with silver and gold sugar pearls, Sugar sprinkles snowflakes and shiny silver snowflakes.

The hand painted cookies have an airbrushed background with hand painted trees and cottages.

Finally one of my favorite parts of the holiday season...all the greenery.  I love putting up a Christmas tree each year and seeing all the evergreens outside covered in snow.  

I tried to capture the whimsy of the greenery during the holiday season a few different ways.  I did some decorated brush work tree cookies, wreath cookies, brushwork pine cone cookies, holly and a few lacy trees.  My favorite were the lacy trees, I just loved how they turned out.  

Just to round things off here are a few detail shots of the cookies. 

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, and a Happy New Year to you all!

Stay Sweet everyone <3