Rose basket for Mother's Day with TruColor swirl roses

When I have some left over royal icing I like to make some flowers that can be used for later projects. This is also a great opportunity to try my new colors.

This time I played with TruColor super red gel natural food color. I needed to add some extra lemon juice to my icing to achieve real red color, as egg white is a base, which turns the natural food color purple. But, as you can see, with some lemon juice I could balance out the acidity and I have some nice red roses. When I had only a little icing left in my bag I added some more white icing to create some dark pink roses, then added more icing to get the lighter shades. I like to use different shades of the same color.

I used my favorite basket cookie cutter again, if you would like to get one from Cookie Cutter Kingdom, use coupon code FRIENDSOFTUNDE to get 10% off.

Here you can see a video of this project:

And some pictures if you would like to have a closer look of the patterns:

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Mother's Day cookies with cute animals

You know you are a cookie addict, when you always think cookies. Where ever you go, what ever you do, cookies designs float into your mind. I am a cookie addict. A few weeks ago I went to Hobby Lobby to pick up some scrapbook paper and I've found this cute stamp set:

Other people would think about postcards or gift tags to make. Not me! As soon as I laid my eyes on these, my brain generated the picture of some plaque cookies with these animal moms and babies for Mother's Day.

I used TruColor natural food colors for this project. And as you can see in the video, they are easy to use. Here is my color palette:

I chose some plaque cutters from Cookie Cutter Kingdom, they have a great selection of plaques.

Enjoy the video:

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Baby cradle cookie

I wanted to create a baby cradle cookie since I have seen this gorgeous baby shower set created by Kenyeres Aniko in February 2014.

My inspiration: baby shower set created by Kenyeres Aniko

But I did not have a cookie cutter to make it and I am way too lazy to hand cut a shape like this. So this project remained a plan until now, when my collaboration with Cookie Cutter Kingdom made it easy for me. 

Update: Now, I can print them myself and they are available in my Etsy store.

I also created a video for you:

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Garden cookies

It seems unbelievable after this long, harsh winter, but spring is finally here. And spring means gardening, so I designed my first garden cookie set.

I love colors and I have a beautiful set of Sugarflair colors, that I do hardly ever use, as it's usually easier to just reach for the colors I am used to. But this time I decided to work with my Sugarflair colors and I truly love them. The base color of this set is Spruce Green, the complementing color has a hint of Khaki coloring in it. The flowers are colored with Egyptian orange and the middle of the flowers is white.

You can find all these cookie cutters at Cookie Cutter Kingdom. The garden tools and the flower pots are my design, the flowers and these gorgeous butterflies are CCK designs.

I hope you will enjoy these videos and maybe creating your own garden set one day!

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Mommy Mission - Healthier Easter Cookies, TruColor Natural Food Colors 2

Being a sugar artist and a health conscious mother at the same time is not easy. But I try to do my best. This project is part of the mission.

I have an easy start as my favorite gingerbread recipe is already healthier than the traditional sugar cookies. It has just a little sugar, the rest is honey and one cookie has about 75 calories (while a sugar cookie can be anywhere between 150 and 250, depending on the recipe).

The tough part is the decoration. I usually use royal icing and color it with Americolor gel food colors. They come in gorgeous colors, they are affordable and easy to use. But they are artificial food colors, so I do not let my kids eat it. I do let them eat some colored food, but my cookies are laying around 365 days a year and that would add up in their bodies way too much. So they had to accept this general rule: no colored cookies for them.

However, as all kids, they love colorful things. Fortunately there is a healthy option! I can use Tru Color natural food colors. They are too pricey for me to use for keepsake and presentation cookies, but they come in beautiful vibrant colors. So this is the perfect solution for my project.

Now, the icing... Around Easter my kids eat way to much sugar with all the egg hunts and parties. So I just decided to skip icing. And here is what I came up with:

I chose five happy colors from the Tru Color standard metallic collection. They are really shiny and could be painted on icing as well. But now I am doing something different.

As they contain no preservatives, these colors come in powder form and have to be diluted before use. I took out a little of each color to a paint palette.

Added some distilled water to them and mixed well with a toothpick.

Then I added corn syrup to the colors. It's clear, will dry hard and helps to distribute the paint evenly.

The next step is painting the cookies.

The drying time is a little longer, than the drying time of royal icing, but it will dry hard and shiny.

Mission accomplished:

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.