Starry Night Cookie

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A little while ago after I pointed out on here that I am able to almost paint with the icing someone commented on facebook saying that they could just see me doing (van Gogh's) Starry Night on a cookie...challenge accepted :)

The perfect opportunity arose when I was able to have a booth at a small art fair to benefit the Carmel Arts Council. Not only did I have pictures of some of my other cookies, but I was able to display this latest cookie and it looked great!


I'll just let the cookie speak for itself on this one!

Kelton's First Birthday Cookie

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My sister-in-law's nephew just turned one and to celebrate that special occasion his mom contacted me to make a cookie for the event. She told me that the theme was going to be giraffes and circles and sent me an image of his adorable bedding from which I got a lot of inspiration. I decided to use the patchwork design of the circles to create yet another circle containing a graphic of a giraffe that I found particularly cute. Because I wanted the focus to be on the design aspect here and the birthday boy can't read I used a smaller but more artful font to convey the birthday message. Together the simple giraffe and the simple lettering work well within the patchwork design of the circles. 

Nothing about this cookie is the biggest or most attention grabbing, but each simple element works well with the others creating a complete and coherent design with enough detail to keep it interesting and exciting. 

My favorite part has to be the border. The white is a great contrast to the middle graphic and the thin and random colored lines make it a lot of fun while being a clean ending to the cookie. 

The colors are one reason this cookie is successful. Thankfully! 

I have used this palette before and due to poor execution of the colors I felt  that the cookie as a whole suffered. I believe I remedied that with this cookie so that each color compliments the other and works well with the brown and the white.

mini cookie just for the birthday boy

   

Since traditionally there is a special little cake or slice of cake made for a 1 year old's birthday, and to capture that candid messy eater shot that parents love, I was asked to create a cookie for that purpose with maximum icing for the birthday boy to dig in to. 

As I was making this little 6 inch cookie, all I could think about was how good this little cookie looked covered in all that icing!!! Poor Kelton almost didn't get his cookie because everyone around my house including myself thought it looked so yummy :) We managed to restrain ourselves and the final design was just perfect for the little guy. One more patchwork circle with a big shimmery "1" all set against the white background with the giraffe spots all along the edge and there it is, a personalized cookie just for Kelton on his first birthday. 

Tie-Dye Cookie

 
This post will be more of a progression through the creation of this cookie, 
and what a progression it was!

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I have to say that I even surprised myself with how well this Tie-Dye cookie turned out! The order came in from a woman and her daughter who was graduating and wanted a tie-dye and peace sign cookie for her graduation party. That was it, no words, no reference to graduation, just the design. So, I thought that I would go all out and create a really bright, really fun tie-dye design that took up the whole cookie, then overlay some white and outlined peace signs to finish. Well, that was the plan and that's what ended up being the final product, but in between was a lot of work!! 

It started out simple enough with adding each color around the center and it was going quicker than I had thought it would, but the minute I moved outside of the compacted center area that's when the work started. That first picture probably took about an hour and half. From that point to finishing the tie-dye probably took another 6-7 hours... a couple of breaks included. 

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I LOVE the look of this cookie just the way it is here. The colors and design are just so much fun and it was such a learning experience to complete just this part of the cookie. I've never done anything like this so the approach I took was an experiment, and although it took sooo long to complete, the final product was amazing (apologies for boasting, but I loved this cookie :)

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Another hour or 2 and the cookie was done. Quite a feat! The outlined peace signs are filled in with sugar flakes to create some sparkle while allowing the tie-dye to show through. The solid peace signs are painted with ivory iridescent paint so that all the peace signs stand out and sparkle against the more matte background. The contrast worked really well and helped the peace signs stand up to the brightness of the tie-dye. Since the Tie-dye design didn't continue around and down the side of the cookie I put a simple white scallop around the edge to make it a clean look. 


Another good addition to this cookie was the colored sugar flakes around the edge. The picture does it little justice, but as the flake colors run together they continue the tie-dye theme. The effect was a pleasant surprise as I have never used the flakes on a border and usually use sprinkles. Just another addition to my repertoire :) 

George Strait Cookie

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My old boss, the one I had made the Harley Cookie for, came back for another order (much appreciated!). This time she knew exactly what she wanted on a cookie and it was just a matter of whether I could do it for her or not....

So she sent me along this picture of the birthday girl's favorite 

concert tour t-shirt and wanted me to recreate the logo on a cookie.

 

And I told her that OF COURSE I could do it!!!! 

I'm not one to back down from a challenge :)

In reality it was actually very easy for me to create this cookie. The bulk of  my work comes from my desire to make a perfect cookie every time I do one. That means when I get a design theme I obsess about the design and colors and composition until it's finished. With this cookie the design was right there and all it took was my ability with the icing to make it look as realistic as possible, and it turned out GREAT!! I loved the final product and outside of deciding were to put the 'Happy Birthday' and what to do to finish the border it was all laid out for me. I couldn't ask for much more!

I utilized some of the technique of adding more dimension that I had worked on in the last cookie, Maddie's Birthday Cookie, to make the scull look as realistic as possible and in person at least it was very effective and gave is so much added depth.

This cookie design only reiterated to me that somehow I do have a real talent for recreating something taken from a picture or a logo and being able to make it look surprisingly accurate! Some other examples include the Cancer-Free Tattoo Cookie (from a camera phone image of the tattoo), the Cars Cookies, and Mo's 30th Birthday Cookie (from an image of her dog) not to mention many of the other logos and designs seen on my cookies. No matter how many I do though, I never stop loving the feeling of completing a design and seeing how well I was able to achieve my latest goal or challenge. 

Keep 'em coming!!

Maddie's Birthday Cookie

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Be careful what you tell me about the cookie recipient because it's likely to end up on their cookie. Since I don't know a recipient and all I have to go off of is the orderer's info, that's what I do.  So when I got the order for Maddie's cookie and was told that she likes basketball, soccer, and tubing behind a boat, that's what ended up on there. Not that that's a bad thing of course! I really liked the way this turned out. 

When I was designing the cookie the first thing that came to mind was the fact that a part of all three things that she liked (the basket and soccer ball and the tube itself) were round and would fit together nicely spaced around the cookie and create a very interesting composition while the center would be a big bright 11 that I  make stand out as much as possible. After I had decided on all of that, I thought that filling the rest of the remaining space around each object with a theme appropriate background would really help bring everything together. A grass field for behind the soccer ball, a net for behind the basketball, and a wake made by the tube to show it in action. The finished product was successful though I had some doubts while executing it.

 I really liked the way the whole of the design works together though each individual object stands out on its own as well.  I will say it again, the picture never does the cookie justice, but I heard it a lot about this cookie, especially about the soccer ball, and I have to agree. The soccer ball was actually one of the best parts about this cookie, it had 3 dimensional shape for each of the hexagons as well as clear sprinkles and iridescent paint to highlight and create more depth. Though the average viewer doesn't recognize the tube at first from the picture, in real life with its dimension it has real character and Maddie knew exactly what it was from all her years of tubing on Geist Lake. 

Even with the center design all complete the whole cookie wasn't complete until I added the 'Happy Birthday Maddie' around the edge which made the whole thing a coherent circular design perfect for my circular cookie!

This cookie was not only fun but really let me work on some techniques to make my designs a bit more 3 dimensional and interesting. I think that aspect really helped this cookie and brought it to a new level. In the end it was fun to make and even more fun to look at....I guess for those lucky people at the party it was fun to eat too  :)