2018 Christmas Cookies

Due to life's ups and downs, I've been focused on so many other things that design work has come in dead last on my list. The arduous process of relocating after 24 years of living in the same house took on a life of it's own. To this end, I've painted more rooms than I can count, repaired sprinkler pipes, deck railings, realigned and re-stacked retaining wall blocks and became the queen of fixing dry rot. The normal stuff like repairing drawer glides, replacing broken toggle switches and patching and re-texturing walls goes without saying. Now multiply that times 2 houses, and you can see why I've had no time to make cookies or design anything. I did get to add an impact driver and finish nailer to my toolbox, so that's a plus.Yes, this girl owns and uses all the tools in the garage!
My husband's recent stroke and other health issues knocked us down again, and made us take stock of what truly matters. The family received an early Christmas present however with him getting better quickly and hopefully on the road to a complete recovery.
Okay, enough of that!!!!
Below are some old tried and true designs as well as some design-as-I-go ones. After a few icing consistency mishaps I started to work my way back into cookie bliss.

Candy Cane and Peppermint Candy Cookies

Christmas Trees and Sleigh Cookies

Christmas Tree Cookies

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Christmas Cookies - 2015

As usual I had more design ideas for Christmas cookies than I had time to complete. So I was happy to at least be able to finish and photograph a few new ones.

This hand numbing and cross-eye inducing mountain contains over 500 decorated mini cookies. I've done these before, only not nearly as many.

These were added to chocolate dipped pretzels, spoons, biscotti, and Oreos along with toffee, peanut brittle and spritz.

White on white snowflakes with silver indentations.

The center snowflakes are molded fondant.

Set of edible top hats.

Black edible 3-D top hat cookie filled with mini snowflake cookies.

The snowflakes on the hat are punched out of a white icing sheet and detailed with icing.

Red edible 3-D top hat cookie filled with small chocolate dipped pretzel rods.

The band is fondant and the buckle was made with silver dragees.

White edible 3-D top hat cookie filled with decorated Christmas mini cookies.

The hat band is made of fondant and decorated with icing leaves and red Sixlets candy.

Elf cookie place-card and 3-D cookie mug filled with mint chocolate candies and candy canes.
The mug was suppose to be another hat, but the brim broke so I added a candy cane handle and molded fondant trim.
The elf's legs are candy necklace beads on bamboo skewers.

Elf place card cookie sitting on a 3-D red hat cookie.
This elf''s legs are candy necklace beads strung on licorice laces.
In hindsight I should have pick a different color for the shoes.

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Easy 3-D Easter Basket Cookies

It wasn't until I was almost finished with these designs that I realized I should have taken photos along the way. Hopefully the very short mini tutorial at the bottom will help somewhat. 

3-D Easter Baskets using colored cookie dough as well as chocolate cookie dough.

I wanted these to be easy and quick, and since I already had the bows and edible lace left over from other projects they were.

Oval basket with a Twizzler handle and fabric bow.

Round basket with a Twizzler handle and edible lace bow.

Oval chocolate basket with a chocolate Twizzler handle and fabric bow. The doily is edible lace.

To make the round basket you'll only need one of these scalloped round cutters, but to make the oval baskets you will need two.
These happen to be made by Wilton.

To make the oval basket you will need to stretch the two round cutters using different stretching points as shown by the arrows in the above photo.

When you stack them they should look like this. The scallops should alternate evenly.

The Twizzlers candy already have a hole in them so I just used a lollipop stick to secure them into a handle shape.

I added the holes to the top cookie before baking using a soda straw.
The bottom cookie does not have the center cut out so it will hold little candies.
You could add mini decorated Easter cookies to these as well, but that would take the "easy" out of them.

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Edible Mad Hatter 3-D Hat Cookies

I fell in love with all those decorated little Mad Hatter type top hats that came out a few years ago as head bands, hair clips and even Christmas tree ornaments.

Those hats have been on my make-it-into-a-cookie list for years, and since I've taken some much needed time away from my forever ongoing home renovation I decided to see if I could translate one into a cookie. And because the design side of my brain never shuts down I couldn't stop with just one.


The upper part of the hat was easy to figure out compared to finding a way to cover the whole thing with an even coat of icing and getting the brim to have a nice flared edge on either side. I know I could have just used a flat round cookie, but my sense of design demanded that it not look like a giant push-pin.

This is my fancy Mad Hatter/St. Patrick's day hat. My very first finished 3-D cookie hat.
The embellishments are 24 karat (supposedly edible) gold brushed on molded fondant pieces.
They can be popped off before eating the cookie however.

Molded white and black fondant along with edible gold were used to make the decorative shapes.
This photo shows some of the pieces before and after painting.

This was actually my second completed hat, but the first photo I posted to other sites.
The basic composition of this top hat is the same, but instead of colored sugar all over I used a patterned sugar sheet by Wilton. Finishing the hat using this method has a lot more visual impact, but adhering the icing sheet takes more time and care.
The flowers are fondant and the heart is a made of sugar pearls and dragees.

The underside of the finished hat, brushed with icing and sprinkled with colored sugar.
Inside I just brushed on 2 coats of black icing without the added colored sugar.
All of the hats are hollow, and as long as the decorations don't extend over the top, they can be turned over and filled with candy etc. as an extra treat.

Front view of another design. The cameo broach is made of fondant, sugar pearls and dragees.

The broach and edible lace are made up ahead of time to facilitate decorating.

Close-up of the edible lace detail. I used a product called Sugar Dress to make the lace as I needed it to stay pliable.  The jeweled flower is fondant with a sugar pearl and dragee center.

Two extra designs using less rings, and shaping the top to give them their iconic cowboy look.
The accents are fondant and edible wafer paper.


As you can see, there are a variety of ways to shape and finish these hats so they can suit any number of occasions. I have other 3-D hat designs in the works including a baseball cap, graduation hat, witch's hat, and fingers crossed, a pirate hat, which is proving to be quite challenging.


♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Pirate Cookies

Pirate cookies are on the agenda today. I'm taking you back several years to revisit two pirate cookies that will now be available at Ecrandals as cutters along with a pirate hat. 

I can't tell you how exciting it is to open a box from Eric and Jamie and find my designs gleaming up at me. I stare at them and wonder how in the world I'm going to force myself to open the neatly wrapped packages and expose their bright shiny surfaces to the elements. Then reality hits me. It's because of these meticulously formed works of art that I don't have to hand cut these shapes anymore, and the packaging suddenly disappears.

The best part however is knowing that I will eventually be able to hand down these sturdy beauties to the ones that inspired them in the first place.

Here is the set all together. The Pirate girl (top) and hat (left) are the new cutters. The Pirate Boy (right) has been offered at Ecrandals for some time now.

Now for some design history.

The adorable little girl in the picture on the left is my grand daughter Annabelle at the age of 5 or 6. Way back when I was designing my Pirate Buddy cookie she asked if I could design a girl pirate for her. Since my grand kids are my biggest fans and greatest inspiration I decided to go one better and design a pirate girl using her image for the cookie right down to the freckles. I first posted the hand cut version (photo on the right) on my Flickr site in 2011.

It starts out as a line drawing that I refine in my computer's paint program.

The Pirate Girl cutter and baked cookie.

My quick way to add outline areas to decorate by cutting out pieces of the template and marking on the cookie with a food marker.

Finished cookie with a slight design variation.

A new addition to my Pirate Designs is this Pirate hat, adapted from the girl's hat with a rolled edge detail added.

The Pirate Hat cutter, and baked cookie.

The finished cookie.

I've designed them for a more girly pirate here, but this can easily be designed for a boy or girl.

The inner hat detail can also be eliminated for a larger looking hat.

And lastly my Pirate Buddy which ironically was my first pirate design.

The boy and girl pirates were originally designed and posted in 2011 hence the old watermarked date.

The Pirate Buddy cutter and baked cookie.

The finished cookie.

Finished Pirate Set

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Creative Packaging for Homemade Gifts (Bath Powder)

This post is from when I was creating other bath products (here) with my grand daughter Alybeth. So this is rather late, as I just found the photos I thought were lost, but hopefully it can be useful later on.

We made our own bath powder allowing the fragrances to set for a week before packaging.

As far as containers go, they needed to be economical for Alybeth to give them as gifts for family and friends, so we tried to buy items that would keep the cost range at around $5.00.

Price wise these are a very good start. 

I bought several sets of salt and pepper shakers for a $1.00 a set at a discount store.

This design seems to disguise the fact that it is a salt shaker and looks cute as well.

The items used to make the snowman powder container in the previous photo are these:

 A salt shaker, a snowman face and buttons printed on card stock and formed into a sleeve to fit around the shaker.  The hat was made using a baby sock. To hold the hat in place and also section off the hat's shape clear hair bands were used. The bell is attached with jewelry findings. The scarf is just striped tee shirt material with the ends cut into fringe.

Using a glue gun to attach ribbons, stickers, and charms, here are a few more designs options for more elegant yet still price conforming containers.

It's important to keep the powder from getting away before it gets to it's destination so

 a decorative envelope seal was used to cover the holes. 

On the ones below a seal or a small piece of tape was added to the rim before the top was screwed on.

For a container with a more elegant look, I embellished a decorative glass salt shaker with rhinestone trim and ribbon. It looks great on it's own as well. 

 I bought this set at a discount store, so using just one as a gift will still be slightly over $5.00, but to be fair I already had the ribbon and rhinestone trim on hand from previous crafts. 

 We made bath powders in many different scents so I decided to use the leftover bits by pouring 

them into these mini shakers and packaging them together as samplers.

  I bought these shakers as a set of 12 for about $7.50 at a discount store. A package of four is well under the $5.00 limit.

Note: Take the tops off and cover with a piece of tape to keep the powder from getting out, replacing the tops of course.

This is the only photo I found of the penguin designs we did. 

The smaller penguin is again a salt shaker from the double pack at a discount store. The larger penguin design printout is covering a foaming hand soap container. We actually made our own soap and added a gingerbread type fragrance.

♥ Happy Decorating ♥

Christmas Cookies - 2014 Designs

I had some left over dough and icing from a cookie decorating party with my kids and grand kids, so I decided to have some me time in the kitchen and play with some designs I've been wanting to try.

Icicle cookies.
These are fancier and have more dimension than the ones I did years ago.

I used a carrot cutter for this one, and forgot to round off the top before baking. I decided to decorate it anyway figuring I could always cover it with a snowflake cookie later.

Snowflake with a decorative center indentation.

Ornament cookie with a decorative center indentation.
I'm not really liking the shiny center.

Ornament and simple tree cookies.
I like the center of this ornament much better.

Two variations of the decorative center.


♥ Happy Decorating ♥