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....

Christmas rush, part 3: teaching!

in December Jennifer emailed me, asking if i could do a cookie decorating demonstration for the Glen Ellyn Newcomers, "a social organization for women who are new to the area" who were having a holiday cookie exchange.  awesome, i thought. after kids, suburban women are my biggest fans.  i read on: Jennifer had already planned on another baker, but she had to cancel for health reasons, and now it was a scramble to replace her.  [related: i once asked my facebook friends who knew me back in the day, what they thought i would have become upon growing up.  almost universally they agreed, something with art and/or teaching. (Spock eyebrow)] 

 i inquired of details, we spoke on the phone, and shazam, the following week found me at Drury Design, unloading my sprinkles and tools and example cookies (left)  in a model kitchen that looked like a Food Network set, from a box that previously held generic firelogs.  i don't travel with my tools, i was at a loss for a neat little rolling plastic organizer thing. (so i walk into a room full of well-accessorized ladies with my log box and lime-green low-top Chuck Taylors looking like amateur-hour.  yet confident in how i would wield the box's contents, so i felt just fine.  c'mon, chef Batali wears orange Crocs...)  i set up in one kitchen while they went over agendas and minutes in the other. then they filed in around the counter, i was introduced, and for the first 10 seconds i was the ill-prepared 7th grade spaz with a book report to present, then i picked up the icing and was instantly zen-master cookie teacher. 

the rest was informal Q&A about my cookie past, tips and tricks, awesome adventures, etc., all while demonstrating flooding dots, piping lines, and fun with colored sanding sugar.  there was a lovely moment when i piped green dots, then switched to red, and when i shook off the loose sugar to reveal 2 colors, there was a collective "ooooooh." i always get a kick out of the perception that this is part magic. (it is!) then i filled a few more bags and let the ladies try their own.

my big "oops" for the evening, and there just had to be one, was that because of time, i had to make the icing the night before so i could grab it from the fridge after work and take it straight to the design store.  problem is, that lets the icing settle a little.  imagine a whipped foam losing it's foaminess. that and the warm room and the warm hands handling the piping bags, and before long we were piping with pink and green soup.  but everyone was a good sport, gave it a try, had fun, and hopefully gave their own batch a try at home. to the left are some of our masterpieces.  i would absolutely teach cookie decorating again.  but i would have a lesson plan, and the aforementioned nifty means to transport the supplies.  but i bet i'll still wear my green sneakers.
i asked Jennifer how she found me--she said Google.  Blogger is part of Google so a search with IL-cookie-decorating-related keywords lands this blog not too far from the top of the search results.   so how often are my cookies viewed? the counter on the blog is set to count individual website visits, but since Blogger changed its dashboard layout, i can also see a count of separate page views. over 5000 people have visited, but those people have lingered and browsed around, and the page view count is nearly at 8800. (!!!) i thank every single one of you for stopping by. i have immensely enjoyed delighting your eyes with cookie stylings.  if you have a second, please take my mini-survey (to the right), and tell your friends to visit (especially if your friends work in bakeries) and if you're a new gal in Glen Ellyn, click that Newcomers link at the top.  then, stop back for clocks, comics, cows, purses, hearts, plaid, houseplants, and whatever i come up with for the office this month.  suggestions welcome. :)

the Christmas rush, part 2

i felt pretty-much-done with Christmas by cyber-Monday. my job involves an early commute, my son is still kind of oblivious to holidays, schedules and finances kept us from going anywhere... it was like a long loud November. but was i grinchy? nay. for i madeth cookies, and they were pretty... but i want to get to March by March, so this is a speed round post. ready?


this was a pile of funky snowflakes i made for Andrea and her family, for watching the kiddo until we got the ball rolling on day care.

these were the yearly Christmas choir cookies. those lines should have been thinner. but the sparkle cooperated.

long story, these new years stars almost had a destination, but i never got them out the door. Jeff took them to work instead. but i was attempting silver on white effects.
and Lois asked me if i could do something Christmasy with frogs as a get well gift. like my froggy princes, these were a composite of a frog and mini hat. i think this spring he'll need some Easter hats with flowers.
coming up, that class i taught. plus new years clocks, girly purses, COWmodities, a plaid experiment, some illicit botanicals, and ...explosions! and then, at last, Valentine's day. (whew!)

the Christmas rush...

so many pictures to catch up through the holidays... lets see if i can post them and not get too bloggy. round one!
these were for the office cookie exchange. i can now say my cookies are award winning, as i took home the coveted "Best Decorated" trophy Starbucks giftcard. i rule.





















all the ornaments were different. i was experimenting with stripes and sugar, and got a neat ugly Christmas-sweater effect. pearl dust on grey icing made the little "metal" caps.


the bottom layer of the tin was pink and red poinsettias, just because.

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.