los muertos!

my last post talked about my artistic origins. all that drawing i did as a kid looked nice on the refrigerator, and i made some really swell coffee mugs in ceramics class, but these little edible drawings are what people remember now. i get asked all the time, "how's the cookie business?" and it's frustrating to have to still be a hobbyist, not a business-ist, but people keep encouraging me, and i keep baking. and behind the scenes, i'm thinking a lot about the future too. i see myself aproned, flecked with stray luster dust, piping a billion dots on some bride-zilla's fairy-tale-wedding favors and humming happily to myself. i'm not necessarily famous in this scenario, but if the cookie world calls on me to be on TV, or be lauded in magazines i just may have to go along. and since i won't get there with boring cookies, i've been aspiring to new levels of awesomeness. i'd like to make cookies such that Martha Stewart would say "holy fondant, those are gorgeous." even if they're just cookies for a 6 year old's birthday, or Uncle Bob's retirement party. because really, if someone is special enough to get a cookie, the cookie should also be special, right?
now how do i segue into these Dia de los Muertos cookies? maybe since i'm talking about the future, i could point out that even if i'm rich and famous, there's still the great equalizer, death, which José Guadalupe Posada illustrated with "La Calavera Catrina" portraying a rich woman as a dressed-up skeleton, and inspiring Dia de los Muertos imagery for the last century. (yay, art history lesson!) i just have to say, if i die, and you feel some need to dig up my skull and have a "poor Yorick" moment, by all means, rinse it off and paint some flowers on it. (you knew her well, a woman of infinite jest...)
i googled a good skull image, resized it, glued it to a plastic yogurt lid, cut it out with an x-acto knife, and airbrushed over it onto a white-iced skull cookie. when dry, i drew with food writing markers. drawback: not enough colors in the pack of markers...
on the way, that one owl, a wine party, some horseback riding, and maybe some deer hunting. mmmm, woodsy...

shoot the moon

i was to color the object that began with a T (it was a tie) so i colored all over its general area with my blue crayon. i was 5, and my kindergarten teacher didn't like my coloring skills. i was taken aside and shown the proper way to stay in the lines and actually make the outline look like the object it represented. while "coloring outside the lines" became an individualist's badge of honor for my generation, it isn't a method that serves every artistic intent. Tolkien didn't write all over the walls, he put Lord of the Rings in a book. you don't toss apples and cinnamon in the oven and hope for the best, you follow the apple pie recipe.
after i was taught how to color in the lines, i loved drawing. i don't know how much paper and how many crayons i went through in my childhood. i got addicted to "making stuff" especially if that stuff made a space a little prettier, or a little more festive. other people spent Black Friday shopping, i spent it cutting out snowflakes to tape to the windows. by high school, i wanted to go into special effects make-up, or movie set designing. i wanted my "lines" to be a director's vision, and my "crayons" to be sculpting tools and paint. but i just couldn't get excited about moving to Hollywood, so i began to wonder if it was the story i was trying to express, rather than its illustrations. so i switched to a writing major.
i graduated from college the year that everyone started a blog and newspapers starting dropping like flies. nothing had happened to me yet, so i had nothing to write about. i took a desk job. i left art to my off time. after a few too many years, i wondered how some people got to be what they wanted, and poor saps like me had to "direct your call." by then i was nuts for cookies, but i had a portfolio to build.
so i built one. and i found that cookie decorating is just coloring in the lines, and making a moment a little more festive and pretty. it's expressing a vision, fooling the eye, telling a story, suspending disbelief, wowing an audience, and taking you back to age 5 for a little while.

in kindergarten i was a witch for Halloween, and i wanted to be an artist when i grew up...

Colts... and the Cosmos...

back when i started this blog, i had participated in my husband's church's silent auction. i offered a year of cookies, a dozen a month, so i had at least one picture to show you on a regular basis. after the year was up, i kept busy, a party here, a birthday there, my wedding, and when i had a job i brought a plate to the office every month. then last October i thought of how we only throw birthday parties for Andrew and Grace on Jeff's side, and my side of the family is all out of town, and that's just not enough birthday cookies. so with my brother's "over the hill" cookies, i got working on a year of birthdays. these 2 are the last in the series.
my niece and nephew, Jackie and Derek, are twins who just turned 24. Jackie, though confined to a wheelchair with cerebral palsy, can paint (with a paintbrush in her mouth!) and enjoys sci-fi (we're fellow Trekkers). Derek, though deaf, can play football. i haven't seen him play, but the hearing impaired have some technique by which they signal with lights. they're 2 pretty competent young people, so i made sure i did my best. :)
the rocket/planet combo was a composite with 2 cutters. both "Neptune" and the horseshoe were done with the airbrush. the planet was freehand before i surrounded it with black, and the Colts logo was a stencil, made from a plastic lid. they were received today--the Indy-fam gave them a thumbs-up. i had a moment's worry about using the football helmet and little rocket for the first time, but those little moments are getting smaller and smaller...
coming soon, a lonely owl, a dead but festive trio, a really cool witch, and it looks like some wine glasses too! stay tuned....

autumn montage!

which will the witch wear?

i did some more airbrush tests (which i can't show you because that picture's file is broken but whatever, they were tests, right?) and was pleased with how they turned out, so i put on my witch hat (no, i'm kidding) and got to work on some Halloween ideas. more magic is forthcoming; for now, i present: witch dresses!
these were a blast. (airbrush joke) i think every cookier has this dress cutter (Sur la Table) but i added the partial oval at the top to accommodate a hanger--i thought it gave it a little more context, after all a dress either has a person in it, or you hang it up, right?
i used to be annoyed at the inclusion of purple in the Halloween pallete. i think when it was a new trend, it seemed to be taking over orange's place. but lately, and with it's new friend poison green, Halloween's color scheme is kind of spooky-carnival-esque. like once upon a time these colors were painted brightly on Halloween decorations and eventually aged to a macabre patina, inspiring Tim Burton to revive them on the big screen. inspiring me to find a piece of lace to drape over the skirt portion of the cookie and spray with black. and i think they put the "boo" in "booya."
i used sanding sugar on the collar and cuffs, pearl dust on the hanger (silver on black icing) and waistband (bronze on orange) and silver dragees for buttons. this would be equally awesome as ivory on white wedding dresses with pearl dust. or bright colors, different necklines, different stencils... [*daydreaming*]
coming really soon, some Halloween cookies take flight! plus a football/sci-fi twin birthday, "los muertos!", and maybe some wine?
p.s., thanks for all the facebook and twitter love after the camels were posted! i felt kind of famous this week :)

ships of the desert

Jeff's Aunt Dahlas orders cookies each year for the choir as a thank you for the Christmas performance. for her birthday, i wanted to do a cookie that evoked something Bible-like, without doing all of Noah's Ark, or more angels. so i picked camels, and dressed them up to look like they were the king's caravan--something Caesar or the Pharaoh or the Magi would ride on. i thought gold and aquamarine were good desert colors, with gold dragees, and little red and white disc-shaped sprinkles shaken with copper and gold pearl dust that looked like little metallic medallions. the finishing touch was the eyelashes, drawn well this time because i finally found thinner food-writing pens (yay!)

with different colors, these would be really pretty for Christmas. or with a variety of animals, they'd look like a carousel. i just might dip into other ancient texts for inspiration--this was a fun start. happy birthday Aunt Dahlas!

meanwhile, stay tuned for another birthday, and Halloween! except my computer is having trouble reading one picture i wanted to show you. you'll just have to believe me, my latest airbrush test was pretty cool...