some helping hands

Donna had seen my wine glasses at the 3 Vines dinner and inquired about a cookie favor for a fundraiser she was hosting. she attached a picture of the organization's logo and i had no doubt, some blob-on-blob mimicry with piping wouldn't do; this deserved precision. [the final picture also deserved better lighting. alas, the day job keeps me from good photo-op sunlight!] more on the art in a bit, first:
the Zellmer Childhood Disease Foundation is named for Mary and Paul Zellmer’s son Jim, who was diagnosed with Type I diabetes when he was 6. to raise awareness and find a cure, they began Pumpkins for a Cure, which is now in it's 7th year of bringing pumpkins every fall to folks around Geneva, IL, and hope to kids with Juvenile Diabetes. read more here to learn more. big high 5 from me, pumpkin farms are awesome!
normally i shy away from logos. branding has become a second kind of identity in our hyper-mediated world. if you were in a strange land, and someone painted a yellow M on a building, you might not suspect that it was meant to convey that there were cheeseburgers inside. but spy the golden arches, and you've *identified*. you instantly know it, like you would a face. when you read "golden arches" you knew who's burgers. you know about swooshes on sneakers, and mermaids on your coffee cup. it becomes a symbol for the thing it sells, and even if you're not buying, you're aware.
so it's no wonder that causes do well with a branded image--think pink ribbons and yellow bracelets. Donna's guests all had to go home with The Logo, and it had to be the same image, like a visual consensus, not some based-on-the-logo "something about cookie hands, i don't know, i ate mine in the car." like i said, it deserved precision. it needed a stencil.
i enlarged the logo, glued it to a plastic lid, and when dry, i veeeery carefully (tiny little fingers!) cut away the black part with an x-acto knife. then i set it to the left a bit, airbrushed with black, outlined in blue, and added the abbreviation with edible marker. i felt the letters were a bit small, and some hands a bit fuzzy, but it was, essentially, the logo.
the NFP status, said Donna, is as of July, and perhaps this logo hasn't gone live yet--all Zellmer roads lead to the pumpkin site. but if i'm working in a Fox Valley area bakery come fall, look for me at Taste for a Cure. mmm, pumpkins.