the last of winter...

sometime after the tattoo cookies, when winter was getting monotonously dark and dismal, i made flood dots, dragged a few with a toothpick, and outlined them with edible markers to make some flowers. the purple edge got a brush of dry pearl dust.
they were pretty and cheered me up. then i had hubby Jeff take them to work to pass the cheer along.
i added simplified versions of these flowers to the Valentine's Day mini hearts i did, but i'd like to do a big cookie with a big tacky-wallpaper-like flourish of blossoms. in crazy hippie colors. all summer long.
i haven't made cookies since last month's lizards, which i still have to post.  don't worry, i intend to be enormously busy with cookies this summer. and if you can think of a few challenges for me, drop me a line. till then, stick around for April Fools/birthday cookies, baby cookies, retirement cookies, probably a ton more flowers, and in the very near future, i'm going to give a cake a try. ("gasp! but katie, you don't do cake!"  "true, but i do do awesome.  and i just said 'doodoo'...")

how now, flat cow?

i've mentioned that i have a temp job; i haven't mentioned that it's among commodities journalists.  Dad worked here till retirement (which is how i learned of the opening) and i remember him working on Christmas Eve when mad cow disease was found in the US.  i remember him bringing home swag from pork conventions [like a t-shirt with a pig in sneakers--"hogs are trendier than you thought"] and i was the only kid in my Spanish class that knew that beef was a big export of Argentina.  it's an interesting corner of the world to sit in for 8 hours a day.  i hear one-sided phone conversations about fertilizer, and livestock reproduction.  i heard about MF Global before you did.  and i have fine minds all around me that deliver breaking news about the journey our food takes. 
this area in the food-writing spectrum is much more interesting to me than recipes for fried candy bars, or whatever novelty is trending lately. i remember when kiwis were exotic. i grew up with a government that says ketchup in a school lunch counts as a vegetable. i know the difference between saturated and trans fats. and lately my attention will linger over stories about "pink slime," Monsanto, or what's going on with honeybees.  food isn't just something that happens between the store and your mouth. it's worth a little research time.  so for the dedicated reporters that translate farm calls and crop reports into easily digested (pun!) news stories, i made some beef chart cookies, and cow-print circles, in their honor.
i call it, "cow-modities."  i suppose if i used primary colors, they'd be Piet Moooondrian cow charts? (wink)
i piped in the colors so that they dried flat, then outlined them with edible marker. the circles were airbrushed with another yogurt-lid stencil.  folks were cracking up--there's something quite strange about a "beef cookie," and i enjoyed this design much more than a regular cow-in-profile image. i could do all kinds of diagrams. maybe for next Halloween i should do animal skeletons? meanwhile i have lizards on the way, and i found out there are baby shower and retirement party cookies in my future, details forthcoming. stay tuned...

some unrelated quickies...

often when i do a project i have some leftover dough, so i roll out a few, try a technique, and pass them along to a worthy someone.  recently, when it was snowing like crazy, hubby Jeff got a ride home from a coworker with an appreciation for pot-related humor.  so i made some pot-leaf cookies (got the cutter at Spencer's, btw) and some pot plants, made from Wilton's ice cream cone.  the first question with this  is always "are these special cookies?"  no.  just plain ol' cookies, i'm a good girl. but i got some green-marker practice in, and he got a nifty treat for being helpful. but i'm also thinking of making a Christmas ornament shape into a hooka...

then i tried a little plaid with the markers and airbrush.  i cut strips out of a big yogurt lid and sprayed once, then again after a 90 degree turn, then drew in some skinny lines.  these were just a test cookie; Jeff also brought these to work.  circles with patterns are nice filler cookies, like when you only need a few that are meticulously decorated, and a few dozen of something easy to make and share.  like pink on pink plaid would go so sweetly with a picture shape for a baby shower. or as you'll see coming up, cows and cow print circles.

and i did a Valentine's Day project for the niece and nephew, but we didn't head in that direction till the following Sunday when the cookies had gotten dry, so i sent them to work with Jeff.  they liked them anyway.  flood dots were outlined with edible marker on tiny hearts, with a few forget-me-nots.  maybe i'll do a Valentine's Day part 2, St Patrick edition, and make green hearts. :) green plaid hearts? 
and i'm still pondering a shape for an April Fool's Day birthday party...
and some lizards will be crawling this way...
and i know i'll make something for the office this month...  busy busy...

pow! boom! zap!

i've mentioned before that i dont like doing licensed characters.  being able to copy someone else's art might indicate good hand-eye coordination (or you have a Kopykake projector) but if you want Tinkerbell, i'll leave it to Disney. plus i never understood why Barbie, for instance, when made into a party theme, has to have her face on everything.  if i were Barbie, i'd want flowers, or hearts, or something about Barbie at the party--i wouldn't want to eat my own face.  so when Evelyn turned 4 and wanted a Spiderman party, i wanted to work around just doing red masks and logos.
a neat thing about comic books is that they're full of pictures.  they even have pictures to depict what you cant see--sound.  in text we call it onomatopoeia. but if you draw it, a big colorful blast shape with a KA-POW, etc, right in the middle is a cool graphic by itself.  and who doesn't chuckle when watching fight scenes in old Batman episodes? (Oof! Splat!)
so i made Evelyn some comic-style action sounds in what were supposed to be yellow blue and red, but oh that red, i need a new brand, because i could only get dark pink.  but it's ok, because girls like pink too.
all 3 colors were applied one after the other so they dried flat, then i "inked" them with the edible marker.  the imprecision of the piping lent to a nice sketchy, hand-drawn effect with the marker, like fun little doodles.  the shapes were a flower for 'pop,' 2 asymmetrical flowers for 'boom,' and 2 elongated stars for 'zap.'
and i've mentioned before that not everyone gets up close to admire the cake before it's eaten.  if you're late, or standing in back, you may miss the big communal dessert/art before it's divided up, but once we were done singing, and the cake was being cut, the plate of cookies circled the room and everyone got a fun piece of comic book art, via a cookie. and anyone who had ever read a comic book got the connection without any direct reference to a character.  besides, the birthday kid is always enough of a character :)  Happy Birthday Evelyn!
and stay tuned for cows and lizards and hearts and plants and plaid, and more flowers... and feel free to throw a few suggestions my way for April Fool's Day, i'm pondering that too...

bags o' cookies

the year's first project went to Wendy, who wanted to send gifts to two ladies on her Thirty-One team, and wondered if i could make purses that mimicked their product.  believe it or not, in my 565-or-so cookie cutters, i still have no purses.  but my shorter tombstone makes a great tote, and the candy corn makes a great shoulder bag.  and it just so happens, Thirty-One has such bags (win!) then after perusing the catalog, i picked pink-on-pink concentric dot pattern, and black on gray flower line design, which i did with flood dots, and edible marker, respectively.  and while the real purses probably zip, i couldn't leave out a little silver dragee "clip."  i made a dozen of each, and a dozen circles in each pattern, and divided them equally between the 2 recipients.  Wendy said she loved them, and that they were exactly what she wanted.  i'm glad--i like the tote, and i'm betting i'll be making more...
i see so many excellent patterns on fabrics and wrapping paper.  i think this spring i'll bust out the totally-70's flowered wrapping paper my grandmother saved.  or my vintage Vera scarves... (...*daydreaming*...)  in the meantime, thank you Wendy! and stay tuned for a bunch more, as i catch up on my backlog of pictures--i'm anticipating a full spring. :)

...and a happy new year!

hooray, i now have all 2011 pictures posted.  :)   funny that these are clocks, and they're sooo late. sorry about that, but my computer is way old--rather than install the camera's program (proverbial straw on proverbial camel's back) all my photo unloading happens at my in-laws house.  and now my computer crashed, so i'm doing this on my lunch break.  i'll have it together someday.  meanwhile, lets talk about cookies...
in the dead of winter the air is dry, and my icing can whip up pretty stiff, so i have to thin it with water. (the opposite is true in August, when humidity mandates more powdered sugar) the slightly blobby lines are a result of slightly runny icing.  i maintain that my icing with egg whites is positively luxuriously perfect every time, but sometimes meringue powder needs a barometer.  but i brought these to the office for New Year's Eve and everyone adored them. (i'm my own worst critic. or the worse ones are polite and say nothing!) 
individual numbers were joined to a plain circle and baked together. the blue was for no reason, except it's my favorite.  i added a brushing of dry pearl dust because the holiday needs something shiny.  the clock face was edible marker and a single silver dragee. you might not be able to tell from the picture, but all the clocks were at 5 minutes to midnight. swell fact about this century-- i can make a version of this cookie every year. :)
and there's more on the way! purses are next, and cows, and lizards...  and if you want to buy me a new computer, i'll gladly make you a couple hundred cookies....