Maddie's Graduation Cookies

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IBEW Cookie

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Daniel's Graduation Cookie

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I wanted to make this cookie for my only cousin who is graduating this year. 

Surprising, seeing as I have 35+ cousins and every graduation season sees at least a couple of them graduation from one school or another these days. If you saw my last cookies for the Cathedral/Chatard rugby team, he graduated from the second of those schools: Bishop Chatard High School. He didn't play rugby, but he did play football for the State Championship team and he also grew to love lacrosse in the years he played there. 

Daniel is not only excited to graduate from Chatard, but to start at Purdue next year! I have not had a lot of success executing split cookies where the two or three themes of the cookie are not really integrated, but separate ideas placed on the same cookie space. This would have to be my most successful attempt yet....let's just say some of the other ones were not even good enough to put up for people to see :) Luckily they were just experiments for family members and at least they tasted good!

Since I had more space to work with for the high school images, I gave a large percentage of cookie space to those while keeping the college logo standing alone for what I think is greater visual impact. To make the two different color schemes work, I chose to make the text next to each school reflect that of the other school's colors so as to create a smoother transition between the two different themes.  In that same effect, I chose to do the border around each school's section in the the opposite school's colors. I believe that really helped the cookie as a whole become a complete design and alleviated my issues with the split themed cookies.

One thing my cousin was impressed with was that I used the correct colors of his lacrosse stick and when he asked how I knew what his lacrosse stick looked like, I had to fess up to some serious facebook stalking to try and make sure I got everything right. :) I love trying to make sure the cookies are as custom as possible, because even if most people don't notice, I like to know that the person the cookie is for really feels like this cookie was made just for them. I know Daniel felt that way since I got to be there for his party and he was able to tell me himself.

That's always the best feeling. So, thank you Daniel, and 

CONGRATULATIONS again!!

Rugby Championships Cookies

CONGRATULATIONS

to the 

 Cathedral/Chatard Rugby Club 

2012 Boys High School National Champion
2012 Indiana Boys Varsity State Champion
2012 Indiana Boys JV State Runner-Up

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My older brother coaches the Royal Irish Rugby Club; a team comprised of players from two local rival High Schools. They have been improving ever since I started following them when my brothers played beginning over 13 years ago and recently have become one of the premier teams not only in the highly competitive mid-west, but in the nation. After a close call last year in the national tournament, they turned around and absolutely dominated this year winning out the tournament with a total score from 3 games of 128-6!! and beating teams from Colorado, New Jersey, and the Mecca of youth rugby up until now Utah. The Irish are some of the best and most exciting young athletes I have seen play the game and I couldn't be prouder of them, my brother as their coach, and my old High School for creating such an impressive club team.

 I have a history in the sport myself and it holds a special place in my heart as it has given me some of the best memories and friends from college. Not to mention, I have 3 brothers who played as well and I've spent plenty of time watching and studying the sport. One of those brothers, the coach of the national championship team even played abroad for the US and played at the highest competitive level possible in the US, the super league, for the Chicago Lions. With all that history, I was really excited to be able to make these cookies for their end of year banquet to celebrate their National Championship and their State Championship at the Varsity level and State runner-up title at the JV level.

The first cookie's design, the National Championship Cookie, was based off of the highly graphic and distinctive look of the jerseys the team wore throughout the year and in the title game in Utah where they beat the Utah united team 51-0. Seriously these guys are sooo good! The uniforms are a very distinctive bright green and white stripe with navy piping and I think they look great so I wanted to use that as a base for this cookie and keep it bold and graphic. My brother wanted to include the trophy and the medal plus all the scores and match-ups for the Tournament. 

I decided on the center design with the text to match the jerseys and the accompanying border first before I began putting the rest of the elements together. Once those were set though, the rest just kind of fell into place. The trophy needed the space on top of the name and the medal fit perfectly underneath.  I decided to put the scores all around the edge inside the border, both to make them stand out and to keep the clean look of all the elements. The white dots and the blue outline were a simple and natural finish to the boarder so as not to distract from the text and also make it stand out more. I usually have a propensity to try and fill in empty space with some sort of filler design. Some cookies call for that to make them come together, others though, that's not the case and I have made the mistake of filling in those spaces and regretting the look of the final design. So I had to really hold myself back to keep this cookie simple and clean. The final element that I added was the year and I'm glad I restrained myself from trying to over decorate, because once I added the year the cookie looked absolutely complete and it was.

A final element that most cookies receive lately is a layer of sprinkles, or sugar flakes around the outside of the border that sits on the tray and adds a new layer of shimmer and depth to the cookie's whole design. Usually, when I edit the pictures that part gets cut out so it looks better for the web, but in real life the sprinkles really add something to the cookies which is why I've used that on a regular basis for quite sometime. A good example of this effect is at the end of the Tie-dye Cookie post.

The second cookie is to commemorate the whole teams success this season since only a certain number competed for the national championship title.  This cookie celebrates the Varsity team's State championship victory and the Junior Varsity team's State runner-up title. Similar to the other cookie, my brother wanted the medals awarded to each team on the cookie as well as the symbol for the club as a whole. The symbol and text of the club are distinguishing characteristics and I wanted to help them really stand out as a central element. All the separate elements were harder to arrange on this cookie, but in the end and with the addition of the rugby ball it all came together very well. In addition to the state champion and runner up medals we decided to add the text describing their accomplishments in the state tournament.

Again, I can't say how proud I am of my brother and this team, they all worked really hard and deserved every bit of their recognition and I was very happy to be able to do this for them to celebrate all of their outstanding accomplishments this year

GO IRISH!