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

Baby Shower Books

I love books!  I love reading! I love this order!  I was asked to make 30 cookies for a baby shower, the theme was books.  The customer gave me a list of the books they would be featuring and I was able to go wild with it after that.  This is what the result was.

I hope you are ready for a ton of booktacular photos of some tasty cookies. 

If you liked these cookies be sure to go an like my Facebook page and check back tomorrow (Friday 5/1/2015) for a chance to get your very own book cookies!

This set of book cookies was a lot of fun to make because I had the chance to use a bunch of different techniques on these cookies.  Up first was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  For these cookies I used a wet on wet technique and then piped the coconut tree and letters on top once the cookie was dry and hand painted the rest.  

Book cover in all its brightly colored glory!

A told B and B told C I'll beat you to the top of the coconut tree. 

Next was a book I haven't read before but thanks to the power of the internet and YouTube I was able to read this charming book.

I loved doing the book cover for Giraffes Can't Dance I think it turned out super pretty.  Everything was hand painted and I used a hand made stencil to be sure to get all of the Giraffes bendy parts in proportion. 

The whole story is very charming and about embracing your own unique self.  What a great message to share with the younger generation.

The two cookies above were hand painted without any stencils.  The little cricket was a doozy to get right.  

I think the next book will be recognized by one and all.  Goodnight Moon is a classic that most of us grew up with.  

For as simple as the artwork is in the book it was hard to capture the single plane illustrations used in the book.  

It really was a challenge to replicate such iconic artwork.  

Talk about challenging artwork to replicate.... Dr. Seuss has always been a favorite of mine.  I love his artwork and his writing.  I was thrilled when I had the chance to do not one but two of his books.  

First one of my child hood favorites Green Eggs and Ham.

For these cookies I used a combo of wet on wet icing technique to create the white space on the orange background and hand painting.  I am thrilled with how they turned out.  I love Dr. Seuss's sketchy whimsical style.  

These cookies were a joy to paint.  It was easy to get lost in all the fin detail that appears in all the characters.  

While painting these all I could think of was the special day this book arrived at my house as a child and my mom read it to my brother and me and then we had green (scrambled eggs) and ham for lunch.  As a kid it was a magical day and one I can't wait to repeat for my kids one day. 

Here comes another crowd favorite!  The Cat In The Hat!  

These cookies were made the same way as the Green Eggs and Ham cookies, wet on wet with hand painting.  

As much as I enjoyed this book, I'm not going to lie, I always identified more with Fish than any of the other characters.  Cat always made me uneasy with all his crazy shenanigans.  

Painting Fish in all his grumpy glory was one of my favorite moments in this set. 

Up next we have a book that is near and dear to my heart.  Growing up I always loved creepy crawlie things, Heck to this day I still do, but I will always have a special place in my heart for caterpillars and butterfly's (my name does mean butterfly after all)

These cookies were all hand painted and the caterpillar on the book cookie was an icing transfer.  I wanted to give the cookie a bit of dimension and I thought a transfer was the best way to achieve that.  

It was a challenge trying to replicate Eric Carle's work with tissue paper and translate it into painting with food coloring.  Because royal icing is pores it starts to absorb the color that you paint on it thus making it a bit difficult to build layers like what Eric Carle does with his work. 

nom nom look at all the tasty food!

Well that's all folks.  I hope you enjoyed all these book cookies as much as I did.  Be sure to go out there and read a book today, or better yet share the joy of reading with someone else!

Remember to check back tomorrow for a chance to get your very own book cookies!

Stay Sweet Everyone!

Chevron Baby Shower Cookies

How sweet is the name Oliver Watson K,  it just warms your heart, and if you could see the little guy your heart would be even warmer, he is a cutie!

This is one of those sets that got me really excited because I finally had a chance to make a chalkboard cookie......and I got to use my super cool new contraption for tracing difficult designs (more about that in a later post)

When I was commissioned for the set I was asked to make cookies to match with a chevron, chalkboard and teal themed baby shower highlighting the baby's name.  From there I had creative freedom to come up with whatever I wanted.

I opted to airbrush a few chevron cookies, do a K cookie to match a beautiful metallic K they displayed at the baby shower and the highlight of the whole set was a chalkboard cookie that matched the birth announcements.

This set allowed me to use a few techniques that I normally don't get to try out, like making my own K transfers and using (non homemade) stencils to airbrush patterns on a cookie.  

My all time favorite cookie of this set was the chalkboard cookie.  I was really excited about this one not only because I had the chance to finally make a chalkboard cookie but I also go the chance to use my Camera-Lucida app on my tablet and the new cool holder my hubby made for me so I could finally use the app.  I will do a nice write up about Camera-Lucida and how to make a stand for it some time soon.  For those of you like me who don't have a kopycake it is a great way to keep things consistent on cookies.  If you are itching to know more go and check Klickitat street for an awesome tutorial.  

Stay sweet everyone!

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!!!

Gender Neutral Baby Shower Cookies

I was commissioned to make some baby shower cookies that were gender neutral, and would set the theme for the baby shower.  The client had not yet picked out colors or a theme for the shower and told me they would match the show to the cookies.  Talk about stress....

I ended up choosing a sunny yellow and a light grass green for the colors and then gave the client several cookie designs to choose from.  She ended up choosing baby foot prints and a stork. 

Whenever you place a custom cookie order with Something sweet you will get several cookie options and prices to choose from.  Here is the sketches my baby shower client received.   

Cookie ideas

Cookie ideas continued

Up first are the storks.  I used the cookies featured on Sugarbelle's site for inspiration.  You can read the blog post here the cookies are truly amazing!

The storks were painted with a thin layer of white luster dust. 

Next came the baby feet cookies.  These were a blast to make and a great learning experience for me.  I have recently started using disco dust in some of my designs and have been experimenting with different applications.  This time I put the disco dust on the cookies while the icing was still wet.  Thus far it is my favorite way to apply the disco dust.

I love the bright shine it gives the cookies. 

This was such a fun set to make.  I can't wait to do more baby shower cookies.  The soft colors and cute designs are a lot of fun to play around with.  

Stay sweet guys :D