Top Hat Buddy for St. Patrick's Day - Tutorial

This St. Patrick's Day design is similar to the one I made for Ecrandal's cookie cutters. The cookie cutter can be found (Here) and has many different design options that I'll show at the bottom of this post.  Today I'll show how I make a leprechaun.

I outlined the area where the hat is going to be, and filled in the band with black and let dry.

When the outline was dry I filled in the face area with flesh tone icing. I like the face better without an obvious outline, but that's just me.

Using an orange red icing I filled in the hair after the face area was completely dry.

I flooded the hat area with green icing and sprinkled green sugar on top for a little sparkle.

I added the mouth, nose, and eye outlines using a fine tip edible food marker.

I filled in the eye outline with white flood icing and dragged it into the corners with a toothpick.

With flood icing I added the buckle and let dry. I really should have used outline consistency icing, but I got lazy and used this instead. You can see it's not as sharp as it would have been had I thickened up the icing.

I used a black food marker to fill in the eye area. I decided to sharpen up the area around the buckle with black outline icing.

A drop of white icing finishes the eye, and a fine line food marker details the hair and freckles.

I added petal dust to the cheeks with a Q-tip, and this little guy is done.

Here are the original cookies I made for Ecrandal. You can easily make a patriotic buddy, or a chimney sweep, or even a magician. The hat can be changed into a cowboy hat or bowler with some creative cutting.

♥ Happy Decorating ♥