eldra's "year of cookies" august '09

challenging myself to do new and different shapes for eldra this month was easy when you remember that nothing happens in august. no holidays, no particular weather accept hot. so i decided to use that lazy-days-of-summer idea and give eldra a day at the lake.

neat new techniques included using the sunflower to make the sun, and painting the woodgrain on the boat with brown food coloring. i was totally intimidated by the fish, but it became my favorite of the trio.

tune in next month; it's back-to-school season, with a storybook theme.

the peaceful cookie

natalia's 9th birthday was this summer and her mom said she digs peace signs and bright colors. turns out i can do both!

it might have been the humidity, but the frosting got uncooperative, so i switched from an outline to dots, and i think it made it even more festive. see, things turn out well when you give peace a chance. for more colors, check out the slide show.

peace!

i scream, you scream...

heather had the grown-ups over for andrew and grace's summer birthdays, so i made a shape for kids of all ages. who doesn't love an ice cream cone :)

"my little phonies"

i know i said i didn't want to make (or fake!) licensed characters but these weren't for sale, so i'm sure i won't be receiving a cease and desist letter from the my little pony people. :)

these were for my future niece and flower girl's 3rd birthday. (see the slideshow for the lavender version.) and yes i really did draw the whole thing out and color it. i think i spent about 6 hours between planning, rolling, baking and decorating, and the party-goers finished them off in a half hour. (as it should be, they were darn tastey too.)

looking forward to a farm scene one day, these would be just as nice in regular horse colors. i'll have to redraw them to make the feet and face less toy-like. perhaps i'll add a verticle piece and make carousel horses?

farmer's market!

this platter was SO much fun to make! the banana was the moon cookie cutter, the shape pinched at each end; the turnip was a heart and a palm tree spliced together; the lemon was a football shape; the radish was a mini heart and mini oak leaf; the cherries were made from a heart; the chili pepper from a leaf; the grapes from circles and a maple leaf; the orange was a plain circle; the watermelon was a half circle; the cauliflower and lettuce were a metal shape i didnt like and bent into an amorphus round shape; the peach was an apple with an altered bottom; the peas in a pod were circles and the moon again; and the rasberries were mini tombstones. i even gave the new shapes little leaves with a fondant cutter. i made them just for the fun of it, and i gave them to my mom when we visited for her birthday. now i'm all inspired to look at shapes beyond their original intended shape, or to combine shapes to make a new picture. i love looking at cookies as little pictures to color. (i was a coloring book artiste back in the day--i wore my crayons down to nubs.) when i think of the composition of the picture as a coloring book, with fields of color lying next to each other, designing cookies gets a whole lot easier. and a whole lot bigger. i would cut one shape and think of another. ...i think i like the blackberries the best.

'cause that's how i roll...

i've been doing stars since i was very little. they're the easiest. icing, sugar, done. to do hundreds of them is, really, to learn about color mixing and having a steady hand. when i do stars, they're uniform, bright, simple and lovely, just like if i've been doing them for 30 years. many of the designs you're seeing now are first attempts. while the sea horse to your left is pretty darn cute, be assured that my next batch of sea horses will be an upgrade. same with all my designs. i'll try to post my latest and best work for each shape.
some other noteables--if you need party favors, i can individually [cellophane] bag the cookies and tie with ribbon. otherwise if i'm delivering them, they'll be on a plastic plate which you can keep, with the whole plate-and-cookie-pile wrapped in cellophane, gathered at the top, and tied with ribbon. if i'm invited to the party, i'll put them on a glass plate, but i'll take the plate home. :)
i have no interest in doing "cookie pops" or bouquets.
lastly, i can't do licensed characters for 3 reasons. 1, i dont have licensed-character cookie cutters. 2, if i did, or if i could fake the designs, i'd technically be making money with someone else's intellectual property. 3, i consider someone else's characters to be someone else's art. to make a tinkerbell cookie is, for me, to just be the last step in disney's cookie business. i enjoy making my own pictures. an exception to this is if the character is ubiquitous/ generic/ public domain. everybody can recognize dracula, the froggy prince, santa, little bo peep, etc, without it being specific to a copyrighted image. so if you're having a sesame street party, i can't give you big bird, but i can do a rainbow of ABC's; hanna montana can have pink stars; batman can have a flock of multi-sized bats--you get the idea. there's a cookie for every party.

eldra's "year of cookies" july '09

and here's eldra's cookies for july. at first i was going simple again--a star, a baseball, and as i was wading through my cutters i thought no, too boring. so i went with the very-appropriate flag, the baffling eagle (i had to consult an eagle calendar for his face) and a more complicated star. thumbs up to mom for getting me silver and gold sugar. i'm not sure if i'd go actual metalic with cookies, but the colors, paired with metalic dragees, were simple and effective. now if only i had a fine enough point to make all 50 stars and 13 stripes.

note to the patriotic, i do have a large statue of liberty cutter. and lots of green sugar. :)