Tie Dye, Teddy Bears, Birthdays and Anniversaries

I haven't really done a lot this month, but here are the few things I've done. My friends were having a 1st birthday party for their son/grandson. They call him Sawbear, so teddy bear cookies were a must. The grandmother made his party hat and I based my designs and color choices on that.

Teddy Bear Cookies, 1st Birthday Cookies, Party Hat Cookies

My long time friend, Anna, had her birthday on the 11th of this month, but was at Disney, so I waited a week later and took her these to surprise her for her special day. She'd said she wanted peace signs, moons and suns, but I knew much better what I wanted to do for her. Turns out I was right. They were beyond anything she'd even thought about and she loved them.

Tie-dye cookies, Groovy Cookies

I also did a few #3's for my great nephew's 3rd birthday party as cookie favors for his party guests. Truly, the date slipped up on me and I threw this together at the last minute. I'd really wanted to do some much more special for the big day. :(

3rd Birthday Cookie Favors

Then I did some birthday and anniversary cookies at the request of my friend Amy. Her husband's birthday falls on the same day as their anniversary. She said that he always asks her favorite thing about his birthday and her answer is that she gets a gift, too! :) I had no idea what to do on the anniversary ones, so I stalked her facebook photos and found two shots from their wedding day. Her flowers were yellow calla lilies, so I opted to do the hearts in yellow, although the color they dried was a little more orange than I would have liked.

Anniversary Cookies, Champagne Cookies

Champagne cookies

 

Birthday cupcake cookies, Birthday Candle cookies

The birthday boy with his cupcake cookie and B-on-a-Stick, the baker!

Oh yeah, I'd done these last month for my friend Alison's mom's birthday. We loved how perfectly the ribbon and the cookies matched - the ribbon was bought completely separately from me doing the cookies. I also LOVE the giant cello bag covering the entire tray - that was Alison's idea - and I may have to use it more often!

Birthday cupcake cookies

Cupcake Cookies (HaliHannigan's Style)

So on Monday of this week I received a late, late birthday gift from my sister and her husband and decided I would make some cookies for them as a thank you. They have a cupcake shop in Jackson, TN called HaliHannigan's Cupcakery , so doing cupcake cookies was an easy choice. I thought about trying to mimic some of her cupcake creations, but truthfully I was just way too lazy to mix that many colors of icing. Then the idea came to me to make HaliHannigan's Themed cupcakes. When creating her business, she went to great lengths to make it unique and inviting. I think they had to have the floor painted several times to get it just right. The colors used are a shade of hot pink, olive green and a black & white harlequin pattern, so I let that be my jumping off point. 

HaliHannigan's Cupcakery, Jackson, TN

I totally lucked out that the pink turned out to be the perfect shade of pink to match her shop, because I was at the very end of my small container of Americolor soft pink (which to me is anything but soft) and I only had a tiny little pink left in the little Wilton tub I had. I got every last bit of each that I was able to get from the containers and it was PERFECT! Then that olive green. Oh my, it was looking really bad at one point - very pooish. I used Americolor Lemon Yellow, Wilton Kelly green, Americolor Warm Brown and Americolor Ivory. At first I did just the yellow, green and ivory, but it still needed something. That's when I added the warm brown and that's when it looked like poo!! So I added a little more green and a touch of ivory and it came out pretty well. I only did the harlequin pattern with icing once, because I'd mixed my black very thickly for a ninja project I was working on and was (see the lazy note above) not going to mix another batch of black. So even though I did it as wet on wet, it still ended up with a texture to it because the black icing was so thick. The remaining ones I did using the harlequin pattern were done using my trusty black food color marker. Worked like a charm.

HaliHannigan's Themed Cupcake Cookies

 NOTE: I have noticed something in my writing in the last few days that is sort of freaking me out - I am leaving out articles and am not noticing it. So, PLEASE point out if you notice one of those omissions and know that I do not speak like a caveman! (Me B. I speak like caveman!)

Here's a collage shot of the shop and the cupcakes together:

So did you notice that I mentioned that I was working on some ninja cookies? A long time friend asked me on Sunday if I could do a dozen ninjas for her friend's birthday on Tuesday. I usually prefer more time in advance in terms of notice, but agreed to do them for her. She just said ninja and let me go with it. I knew I could do easy faces with a round cutter, but that seemed pretty boring. Then using the gingerbread man cutter came to me and I did a google search and a pinterest search and saw that I was not the only one with that idea. My friend wanted black, but I strongly recommended against that since the birthday party was a lunchtime at their office and they would be seeing patients immediately thereafter, so the black teeth thing would definitely come into play! I told her that I thought pink ones would be cute and she agreed.

Pink Ninja Cookies

Recognize that pink? Yep, I did them on the same night and since I was so limited in the pink coloring I had on hand, I mixed enough for both sets and crossed my fingers. Since I had other colors I was going to use on the cupcakes, I did these first since they needed to be all pink. I think they turned out pretty cute.

Over the weekend I'd done some graduation cookies that were a total disaster. The school colors are purple and gold. I was worried about getting the gold just right and finally liked it... then it dried. I didn't see it at night, but really wonder if it glowed! I think I'll rename it to Rudolph Gold. And I don't know what happened with the purple. I looked up the Sugarbelle Color Chart and liked what she called her favorite purple. I went to get color because all I knew of that I had on hand was some Regal Purple. I made a special trip to Hobby Lobby to get the Electric purple. Got home and had 2 Regal Purples, for a total of three identical bottles, but no Electric purple. That's what I get for not checking and just trusting the display. I was bugged, but not enough to go back and switch it out. I don't like the Regal Purple alone because it seems to photograph very blue for me, although in person it is clearly a shade of purple. I looked and found that I had some Wilton Violet, so I just added some of that in with the Regal Purple and the color came out quite well. However, I don't know what happened with the drying. After an entire night of drying, the gold ones were completely dry, but those purple ones weren't fully dry and looked like they were dry on the edges, but wet toward the center. I had to get them dry so I did the quick dry method and put them in for about 25 minutes. When they came out, they were dry, but they looked terrible! The outside of them is noticeably darker than the rest of them. No idea what the problem was. The cookies were a little greasier than normal because I may or may not have been precise with my measuring, so maybe it was oil that seeped into them? But I can't figure why it only did it on the purple ones. At least it was somewhat of a uniform discoloration! Kelly loved them, as did the graduate, Anna, but I was totally cringing at how hideous they looked! (I am including a pic, but I am not going to caption it, tag it or appropriately name it because I don't want them showing up on a search engine!  LOL)

Oh, and once again, the lazy bug was visiting me, so I just did the outlines on the diplomas with the purple. One thing I did like about the diplomas, though, is that I have always hated the way my bows looked because that cutter has both the top of the bow and the tails of the bow, so to me it looked odd whenever I did them. So when I was cutting them out, I simply cut off the tails and liked it much better.