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Learn to Think OUtside of the Box, Er, Cookie Cutter

You don't need to buy a cookie cutter for every cookie you want to make.  Learn to think outside of the cookie cutter and you may just find that you can make all sorts of designs your cutters were never intended for! 

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.  When life gives you a paw cookie cutter, you make a turkey!  

I Make Lots of Cookies

I know there aren't a lot of ways to really express what I mean, so I'm just going to use a picture, then I'm not going to say another word. 

massive quantity of sugar cookies

We have a giant cookie party for our neighborhood each year (or we did, pre-COVID...2020 is in the works for something very different looking). 

BUT.  THERE WILL BE COOKIES.

I have hundreds of cookie cutters, but I don't use hundreds of cookie cutters.  I come back to a few shapes over and over again.  I have trained myself to try to think outside the cookie cutter design that was implied, and see what else might work.

A Word About Royal Icing

There is often reference to “piping consistency” and “flood consistency”. I have used those terms before in some of my own tutorials. BUT there are plenty of designs that don’t require the use of both. And for those, I split the difference! 

My icing consistency is neither flood nor piping, it’s 15 second icing. If you want a GREAT royal icing tutorial, here is one of my favorites…https://www.sweetsugarbelle.com/2012/03/consistency-is-key-twenty-second-icing-and-more/

I almost exclusively use the 15 second icing, as you may have also noticed if you caught my other recent Fall cookie adventure: https://amandatoryactivity.com/owl-sugar-cookie-tutorial/

Paw Cookie into Turkey Cookie

I have a video tutorial for you below, so you can see the turkey design emerge from beyond the paw.  It's not necessarily the most tutorial-like of my videos, but I think it's entertaining.

It's also only 6 minutes long, and I recognize the appeal.  I do.  There are only so many hour long Cricut videos you can watch before you need a breather. 🙂

I started by sketching out the basic turkey shapes onto the paw cookie with an edible marker.

Then I added some feathers, making sure to work on every other feather, so the shapes don't morphe into one another.  

I let them dry for 15 minutes in between decorating, so the shapes stay nice and separate.

Then added final details, and boom!

Do you see it?  Can you think outside of the cookie cutter too?  I think you can...



High Speed Video of Paw to Turkey Transformation

I have linked my YouTube video tutorial below.  I hope you find it helpful and/or entertaining.

I you try thinking outside of the cutter and come up with a creative cookie design, drop me a note, I'd love to see !

Materials used for this project are listed below.  Some links are affiliate links, and if you make a purchase through one of these links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.  If you do, thank you in advance for your support of this blog.

 

   

Large paw cookie cutter: https://amzn.to/35U8d29 

Icing colors used are Americolor gel colors. https://amzn.to/3oEcTQS 

Food color markers: https://amzn.to/3p0OBAS 

Tipless piping bags are from Truly Mad Plastics https://trulymadplastics.com/ 

Need a scribe tool? https://amzn.to/3mJQYpF

Love,
Amanda

A Cowboy Wedding Card?

In this tutorial, I will show you how to make this cowboy wedding card design using elements from Cricut Design Space.  I will show you how to remove what you don't need, add what you do, and create a design that you love!

Why a cowboy wedding card? Well, it's what you need when a cowboy gets married, right?  I needed a wedding card fit for a true Texan, but there was nothing in Cricut Design Space that I thought would work.

So, I created my own design using a bunch of different elements from Design Space and made it into exactly what I needed.

Cowboy wedding card
Cowboy wedding card interior

Don't Feel Limited By Design Space Designs

Need something special?  Make your own! 

I'm not a big fan of taking the straight-up design out of Cricut Design Space and running with it.  

You may have seen evidence of this in some of my previous projects, like the Mother's Day gift box, or the Grill Master birthday card.

One reason I really like my Cricut is that I have the ability to make changes.  You're not stuck with the designs you are given, you are limited only by your own ideas.  I often find myself looking at a project and thinking "that would be an awesome card if...", or "I wish this design had..."

So I'm going to show you the process I took to make that happen to make this cowboy wedding card!

I Saved the Cowboy Wedding Card Design for You! Link Below

I love to share learnings, and I love to show you guys the process for things, but I get it.  You're busy.  I understand. 

If you don't want to watch the whole video tutorial, but you just want the file, I will link it for you here. If you have Cricut Access, I think the whole file should be full of only free images.  If you don't know what Cricut Access is, here is my affiliate link for info: 

Cricut Access 

If you enjoy it, please consider subscribing to the YouTube channel, or signing up for the blog email list so you get notified of new content. 🙂

Let The Video Do the Talking

I'm going to let the tutorial video do all of the talking here.  I walk you through picking the objects I want (changing my mind a few times 🙂 ) and putting the design togther.

Next, I walk you through the construction of the card which is very simple and straightforward.

Materials used for this project are listed below.  Some links are affiliate links, and if you make a purchase through one of these links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.  If you do, thank you in advance for your support of this blog.

Cricut Explore Air 2: https://shrsl.com/2kzgv

Cricut Access: https://shrsl.com/27tq8

Cricut cardstock:  https://shrsl.com/21uhj

Wink of Stella glitter ink pen: https://amzn.to/3mWZCkD

Patterned paper with dark blue back:Natalie Maran Little Terrace pack  https://shrsl.com/27xjd

Precision tip glue bottles: https://amzn.to/2GC0X0W

Pearlescent cardstock: https://amzn.to/3mXZtO8

Foam squares:  https://shrsl.com/24rsx

Cat's Eye Chalk Inks: https://amzn.to/3eMfWBt

Love,
Amanda

Owl Sugar Cookie Decorating

In today's post, I'm going to talk through the process of turning an inspiration piece into an decorated sugar cookie owl!

I'm calling him Professor Owl because he's wise (owl, duh) and the bowtie and vest look professorial to me!

Inspirating Strikes in Odd Places Sometimes

I would never refer to my sugar cookie design as "inspired", but the fact is that the design was inspired by a random trip to CVS and the impulse purchase of a clearance $4 decorative pillow.  

I put it down and picked it up again.  And put it down and picked it up again.  Eventually I just bought it to take home. During my fits of putting it back, I kept thinking back to how cute he was and how I thought he would make an awesome cookie design for Thanksgiving.

Holiday Cookies and Place Settings

If you've read my blog before, you will already know that I'm a fan of a little "extra" in the table setting department.  In fact, if you've followed the last few posts, you'll see the placecards I made for Thanksgiving last year as well as the pumpkin napkins that I folded for the table.

Today's owl cookie rounded out the place settings for my table last year.  So now you have all of the pieces!

Thanksgiving 2019 place setting

It is pretty common for me to include a bagged cookie with a place setting for a big holiday meal.  Nobody is actually hungry enough to eat the cookie, but it goes home as a party favor and people seem to really like it.

Sometimes, the cookie even acts as a placecard itself if I'm short on time, like in this pic from Easter 2016.  Cookie and placecard all-in-one. 🙂

(Incidentally, if you'd like me to teach you that bunny napkin fold in advance of Spring, let me know in the comments and I'll put together a tutorial!)

Easter place setting 2016

Down to the Decorating - Time Saving Steps?

Tipless Piping Bags!

Despite having a lot of steps, I actually consider my approach to cookie decorating to contain a lot of time-saving steps.   I realize some of you are probably laughing at me saying that right now....but that's how it seems to me.

For example, I don't use tips for the most of the cookie decorating I do.  For this owl cookie, I only used a tip once, and that was to create the bowtie!

So, throughout the process, you may notice that I haven't put a tip in my bag.  I vary the size of the hole I cut in the end of the bag, depending on how much detail I need.

15 Second Royal Icing

If you've decorated cookies before, or watched cookie decorating tutorials before, you have probably heard about the various icing consistencies.

There is often reference to "piping consistency" and "flood consistency".  I have used those terms before in some of my own tutorials.  BUT there are plenty of designs that don't require the use of both.  And for those, I split the difference!

My icing consistency is neither flood nor piping, it's 15 second icing.  If you want a GREAT royal icing tutorial, here is one of my favorites...https://www.sweetsugarbelle.com/2012/03/consistency-is-key-twenty-second-icing-and-more/

Sketch Out Your Design on Your Cookie

I started with a food color marker and used a light shade so if I colored outside of the lines it would be less noticeable. 😉 

I wasn't going for a dead ringer for my pillow here.  I was trying to put the cutest parts of that pillow design into my owl cookie cutter shape.

sketch basic shapes onto owl cookie

Outline and Flood Different Sections - Drying In Between

I started out with the body-colored parts, again with my tipless bag and 15 second icing.  

The icing is runny, but I use a scribe tool to help push it into place.  I also happen to find that process really satisfying!

Scribe tool to help with icing distribution

I think one of the greatest cookie decorating secrets is this:  you can let individual shapes dry and flood shapes next to them later in order to create a natural break in the colors and shapes. 

Let sections dry in between

You can see that here because I clearly went back and added the vest after the feathers had dried.  This helps insure the colors don't bleed into one another. 

Same with the little feet.  

I work in sections and since I'm making multiple cookies at once, there's really no time wasted.  Once I'm done with a section on all of them, I just go back to the first one and start on the next section!

Include Details When Possible

Nothing finishes off a good cookie design like the addition of a couple of interesting details.

In the case of professor owl, I really wanted the dots around his eyes, and the little pocket on his vest.

And, of course

THE BOWTIE

I almost FORGOT the bowtie.  In fact, I started taking photos and everything and then went "wait a minute...."

Decorated owl cookie excluding bowtie

Royal Icing Transfers

To make the bowtie, I made super-simple royal icing transfers.  It sounds complicated, but it's basically piping your shape out onto parchment paper in advance.  

I do it a lot if I want to get a jump start on some details I need for cookies (eyeballs are a common use).  I might also do it if I don't want to have to worry about piping directly onto a cookie and screwing it up.

Royal Icing transfers allow you to only put on your cookie the shapes that look good. 

So, for this bowtie, I used a small open star tip and DID NOT USE 15 SECOND ICING.  I needed this icing to be firm enough to hold it's shape. 

What if you already thinned all your icing (I had!)?  Just add more powdered sugar and thicken it back up. 🙂

Royal Icing Transfers

When they completely dry, you can peel them off of your parchment like those old candy buttons that they used to sell (or do they still?)

Peel off royal icing transfer
Apply to cookie with icing glue

And then just apply to your cookie as a finishing detail!

Also, Accidents Happen...

I was making a couple dozen of these at once, and naturally that meant moving things around on the table, in and out of the way, in and out of the camera frame, etc. 

I dragged the end of a bag of icing through my owl cookie!

Owl cookie mistake

I suggest watching the video tutorial if you want to see the fix on this guy, but yes.  We CAN fix it.

Salvaged cookie damage

In the end, each cookie was really different anyway...so a little extra texture from a repair blended in just fine!  Truth be told, I just made that cookie mine at my place setting...so nobody knew anyway, but I don't think it would have been apparent.

Tray of finished owl cookies

Video Tutorial

As usual, I made you a video tutorial (super high speed) to show you the process.  I find it easier to learn that way, so I hope it's helpful.

Materials used for this project are listed below.  Some links are affiliate links, and if you make a purchase through one of these links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.  If you do, thank you in advance for your support of this blog.

 Owl cookie cutter: (mine was old and I don't see it any longer, this is the closest one in shape and size) https://amzn.to/3oDd0fqIcing colors used are Americolor gel colors.  https://amzn.to/3oEcTQS Food color markers: https://amzn.to/3p0OBAS Piping bags, bag clips, and detail brush are all from Truly Mad Plastics  https://trulymadplastics.com/ Need a scribe tool?  https://amzn.to/3mJQYpF

Love,
Amanda

About A Mandatory Activity

A Mandatory Activity sells artisan candles and bath products handcrafted, by me, in Maryland, USA. My candles are hand-poured using 100% soy wax.
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About Amanda

I’m Amanda, and I put the AMANDA in A MANDAtory Activity (and I like a good bad pun). I run a blog, A Mandatory Activity, focused on baking and crafting for gatherings and gifts.

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