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

Hello Kitty Cookies (and a few more things)

Guess I need to get back in the habit of making posts here again. I got kind of burned out on doing cookies over Christmas and didn't do any at all in January, but once Valentine's day began approaching, the bug bit me again. Here's what I have been up to since Christmas, from now backwards.

Hello Kitty Cookies

I was terrified about tackling the Hello Kitty bodies. Not sure why exactly, but I was. I used the Sugarbelle trick for marking the eyes and nose, and even used it on the center of the bow for both the face ones and the body ones, except I used a needle instead of a push pin. On one of the bodies, I tried marking the body with random spots to give me a feel for it and it came out okay, so after that I just jumped in and did them free hand. The broke these up into a number of steps, which worked well, as the parts had a little drying time before I finished all of them and was ready to begin the next step. I started with the center of the bow, then moved on to the rest of the bow. You may find my next step odd, because it was truly a stab in the dark, but I next did the dress. Actually, I think I ended up combining the steps of the remainder of the bow and the dress into one step after I got a few under my belt. I then outlined the kitty face, ears and around the insides of the bow; then I filled the face and paws. At that point, I went to bed, because I needed a lot of drying before moving on to facial features. When I awoke, I marked the faces using the template I made with parchment paper by tracing the cardboard picture that was attached to the cutters when I bought them. I tried one set of whiskers with the black icing I was using for the eyes, but it was far too runny and I was too lazy to mix up a thicker second bottle of icing, so I just did the whiskers with a black food color marker, which I think looks great.

Hello Kitty Face Cookies

Valentine Cookies

Champagne cookies, Valentine Cookies

I am not sure what the heck was going on with the champagne - both the bottles and the glasses. I messed up mixing the color and added bronze and it ended up darkish orange-ish. So to compensate, I added a ton of white food coloring, which is super watery, along with some shades of yellow gel icing. I think I must have had way too much coloring in that little bit of icing because it just didn't want to dry and was a little odd in consistency as it did finally dry (used the oven on warm 170 degrees for an hour), even though it was made from the same batch of icing of all of the other cookies shown with it. Lesson learned about using too much coloring to make up for mistakes. Just start over.

Valentine Cookie Bouquet

Eye glasses cookies

Eye glasses decorated cookies

Christmas decorated cookies

There were so very many Christmas cookies that I wanted to do, but just simply ran out of time to do. I had about a gazillion cutters laid out to use over the month, but just never got to many of them. Here are the ones I did get to. The cookie wreath and the reindeer were last second throw-togethers with leftover icing. Actually, the wreath uses both glaze and royal icing because I didn't have enough of either left over to do them any one way and the glaze is much easier to mix up, but I am just not thrilled with the finish of those and my sloppy work on them. But the person I gave them to didn't seem at all bothered - don't think she even noticed, as she raved and raved over them.

Christmas Tree decorated cookies

Holly leaf Christmas cookie wreath

Reindeer Christmas decorated cookie