Advent 2015

Today is the First Day of Advent. You can read about advent and the four candles in my post from last year. This year, I created this advent wreath with the Hungarian folk art flowers along with coordinating ornaments and candle holders I will show you later.

My sweet friend told me she was planning on red and teal Christmas this year, so I decided to surprise her with an advent wreath centerpiece and some matching Christmas ornaments.

Advent is such a beautiful period of the year. This year, I decided to work less and focus on little sweet things more. Enjoy this wonderful period of the year!

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Cardinal in winter - cookie featured in Food Network Magazine

Way back in August, I got a request from a Food Network Magazine editor to send them two designs of Christmas cookies (6 of each) for their December issue. They needed 4 inch circle sugar cookies, reflecting my home state. I was in trouble. I do gingerbread and I am Hungarian. I could not tell one Holiday thing that would be specific to Kentucky and I did not have a go to sugar cookie recipe either. But I like challenges, and this was one for sure.

Luckily I have great cookie friends who could help me out with the recipe, so this part was easy.
The design was a little harder, because it had to be Kentucky, Christmas and I also wanted it to reflect my style.

One day, I looked out the window and saw a cardinal on the tree. Cardinal is Kentucky's state bird. I figured the cardinal would be perfect for this design. I created 6 different lace base, then painted the bird on the cookies. I sure have to work on my painting skill. This was the firs time ever I painted on a cookie. Actually, I did not paint much since preschool at all. But I will learn it eventually. So here is my design, far from being perfect, but a little Christmas, a little Kentucky and a little me.

Probably I would have chosen the other design because of the imperfection of my painting, but the editors picked this one. 

If you have a chance, get the December issue of Food Network Magazine and check out this article! It's so much fun! It has a cookie design from each state, here is a sneak peek of the page where my cookie is featured:

They also have 25 cookie recipes in this issue.

Have fun and happy baking!

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Inspiration: from antique embroidery sampler to cookie gift

You never know where the inspiration comes from. And sometimes planning a cookie takes longer than actually making it. This wedding gift cookie illustrates both of these statements.

A friend sent me this picture of an antique embroidery sampler as inspiration for a wedding gift cookie he envisioned for a couple. The sampler looks amazing, right? Obviously it has way too many motifs and colors for a cookie. So my first question was: Which are your favorite motifs you would like to keep? And the answer helped me to set the corner stones of the project:

• keep the boat
• keep the flower pot above the boat
• do some nautical motifs to the bottom part
• make this a 3 piece puzzle of three 9x6 inch cookies (I have cookie boxes of this size to ship the cookie safely)

I also knew, that I wanted to

• replace the angled, triangular motifs with curves (closer to my style)
• limit the number of colors as much as possible
• add symbols and motifs of love, relationship, wedding if possible

So I was ready to start the planning:

Here is the complete design as I planned on paper:

Then I planned the colors. At the left side of this picture you can see my Sugarflair color chart. When I get new colors (I am a color hoarder - have a full sets of Americolor, Sugarflair and Trucolor and a wishlist of many more) I paint the actual color to a sticker and write the color name next to it. This way I have a much more accurate image of my colors, than the printed stickers.

Next to the design I listed the colors with the consistencies needed. Fore some colors I needed more than one consistency.

And here is the actual color palette. Still a great selection for just one (3 piece) cookie.

I baked the cookies, flooded them and created the design on the cookie.

 Here is the result:

Where do you get your inspiration from?

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.

Toothpick roses made easy

I know, I am late to the party, but I just made my first ever toothpick roses a few days before my Texas trip. 

The start was easy. I mixed the very thick icing and piped the rose. And there I was with a rose sitting on top of a toothpick in one hand and a piping bag in the other. And now what? - Asked myself. What should I do with this toothpick? Stick it somewhere for a few hours until the rose dries? Then do the same with 99 other toothpicks? No way! There has to be a better way!

First, I wanted to dry these flat in my dehydrator. Second, I didn't want to use a new toothpick for every single tiny flower I make.

I figured, if I had a plastic sheet with holes I could pull the toothpick through the hole and the rose would stay on the sheet and have a flat bottom. 

So I raided my storage for a "plastic sheet" (wishing I had stencils) and found this cheap cutting mat from Dollar Tree. I poked holes into the sheet and the prototype of the tool was born:

It worked just fine, but it was a pain to poke all the holes into it. So I decided to ask Tammy from 2T's Stencils to make me some stencils with holes during my Texas trip. And she did:

Now, I am a happy camper. I have a couple of stencils to make my roses, with different numbers of holes for the different sizes of roses.

Here is the tiny rose stencil in action: it can hold up to 49 roses:

You can watch my little video here:

You can get your own set of rose stencils at 2T's Stencils. Have fun with your flowers!

Go to my website to see more of my work.

Join me on Facebook.
Follow my youtube channel.