(If you are here for the Going Buggy Blog Hop please go to THIS POST to find your letter to help you solve the puzzle)
The answer to yesterday's question is the Martha Stewart Seasonal and Elegant Cake Art Cartridges. I do not have a Cricut Cake machine and I really don't have a desire to own one. I am not a cake decorator and I actually prefer to make pies with simple crusts or crumb toppings.
However, earlier this month I found out about food color markers at our friend's party (remember her fancy holiday cookie plates?). I just knew I would have to track the markers down and try making something with them.
I found this set in a local shop. The brand my friend had was called "Foodoodlers" and the ones I found are by Ateco. There were a little expensive - about $24 for the set of ten.
I set out to make some plain cookies so I could frost them and then decorate them with the food color markers. I looked for a basic sugar cookie recipe, called my sister and got an old recipe from my Mom, looked in a few cookbooks for their basic recipes and then made up a recipe that was similar to these. I need to try it one more time to be sure I am happy with the proportions and to make the dough a little less sticky.
I looked online for a glaze/frosting recipe that would work well with the markers. I needed it to dry very flat and smooth and I found a great recipe on the King Arthur Flour site. Here is a LINK to the recipe I used. I think my frosting might have been a little too thick. It spread nicely but I didn't go as far to the edge as I would have liked - maybe you can do a little better!
I cut out a lot of different heart shapes - some were "doily" cuts that look like lace. There are some very specific guidelines for working with the images and the sizing on the Martha Stewart cartridges. I'll go into more detail on these in the review of the Martha Stewart cartridges that I did for Scrappy-Go-Lucky (this should appear on their blog later today).
This heart was cut at three inches from plain cardstock. I was surprised that it cut as well as it did but I probably wouldn't use the heart as it is for a paper project. (I do have a plan for it so watch and wait to see it again soon...).
I started to cut out the heart shapes that were far less intricate. My goal was to find some shapes that would be easy to trace with the food color markers.
I simply held down the stencil with one hand and colored through the openings. I had to shift my hands around a little but it wasn't hard to find all of the areas to color.
Using the cardstock cuts as stencils made it much easier to get balanced shapes. I also did some free hand drawing on the cookies for fun.
I used two colors on most of the cookies - a bright red and pink. There was a third marker with a pale pink case but it turned out to be a peachy orange color. You can see it at the right corner below.
I have no real experience with cookie decorating, but I think with some more practice I could do better. I was happy with these for my first attempt and the cardstock stencils were a big help.
I might try to get the glaze closer to the cookie edges but I do like the effect of the scalloped border. I found it was best to always add a defining line around the edges of the frosting. There were a few totally free hand design cookies and also some that use the cutouts from shapes that were not hearts. The second cookie from the left in the top row above is decorated with a circle cutout.
The circle stencil is at the top of this photo. I can save these and use them a few more times before they need replacing. I could also do the cuts in plastic stencil material for longer lasting tools.
I'll be back to paper crafting tomorrow in the midst of another storm. Our son arrived home safely on Wednesday morning and, depending on the weather, I'll be taking him back to his last semester of college in New Jersey in the next day or two.
I did want to let you know that if you use the Creative Memories StoryBook Creator 3.0 Plus or the sbcStudio program, there is a half price sale on all Valentine's theme digital artwork downloads from January 19 to the 26th. There are some lovely sets and the half price offer makes them a real bargain. You can see the items offered at THIS PAGE on my Creative Memories personal website. Be sure to pay attention to whether the item you select is for the PC or the new Mac sbcStudio program - they are not interchangeable. The new Reminisce Valentine's Addition is just beautiful - I'll be posting a project using it soon.
For traditional scrapbookers, the sale on albums, pages and page protectors is also continuing - 20% off through the end of January. If you don't have a local consultant I'd be happy to help you - here is a LINK to my CM personal website.
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