First of all, how great is this? I find myself in one of the
coolest places in the blogosphere! This
blog is amazing, and Georganne is so pivotal in my cookie art experience that I
could not be more honored to be here on Lilaloa. What I want to talk with you
guys about today is Inspiration and Design.
What can I say? As an architect, I am a designer first and
foremost. I love the process of cookie
design, and enough people have asked me about it that I am hoping that two or
three people will find this interesting.
Here’s where this set started….with an image a friend of
mine posted to Facebook a long time ago, that I pinned to my idea board on
Pinterest, waiting for an excuse to make some cookies. Well, then I found out that I knew a couple
of cookiers that were expecting, and I hatched a plan to make them a few baby
shower cookies with this image as the starting place. The best part though, was when right before I
started, my friend who posted the image in the first place told me that she was
expecting too!
So now I have a cookie project- three baby sets- and a
single image. This image is the seed of
my design. Not all of my projects start with an image. Some start with a place,
a color scheme, or even a feeling or technique I want to explore. For me, that seed or central idea of the
design is critical. If I get stuck later
in the decision making process, I bring the central idea back to mind and that
points me in the right direction again. Let me also say that for a lot of cookiers,
your starting place is going to be an invitation, or a TV show, or some other
direction from your client, and these are all totally valid starting places for
the creative process. Not all art springs unbidden from the soul, though obviously
it is great when it does!
For me, the next step is always heading to Pinterest. Others may start with sketching, or just
start rolling their dough, but I am more of a collage artist, and I like a good
inspiration board. Pinterest can be
overwhelming, so I wouldn’t just dive into the stream of images. For me, I
first go through my own boards looking for things that might work. I have cookie idea boards, seasonal boards,
color and texture boards, and cool cookie boards- all great resources for me
when I start a project. And you don’t
have to have all those boards- you can use mine, or some of the many other cookiers who are maintaining
boards with tons of cookies and cookie ideas on them.
After I look at my own collections, I do a search. I usually start pretty specific to what I am
thinking, and then do various broader searches.
So for this set, I started with “giraffe baby shower cookies”. Then
maybe “baby shower cookies”, “giraffe graphics”, “baby giraffes”, “simple
giraffe art”, etc… While I start my
searches specific so I can see what’s been done before and what is out there to
do, I always start with a kind of brainstorming approach to the pinning
itself. Pin whatever appeals to you! At
this stage, it doesn’t have to be something that is going straight to cookie
form. It can be something that helps you
pick a color, or a pattern. Pinterest is
great because when you find something you like, it links not only to the
source, but to lots of other boards made by people who also liked it, so you
can follow some of those threads and find great stuff that way too. Just get a collection going.
I start this part early.
I find that if you can get a board going as soon as the project comes on
your radar, it gets the creative part of your mind thinking “behind the scenes”,
and you have a place to pin those ideas as they occur to you or as you see
them!
Once I’ve got my Pinterest board
well under way, I start thinking about and sketching for the cookies themselves. I’ll think about cookie shape- sometimes from
a cutter I have, or sometimes I buy one (shh, don’t tell on me). For this set I bought a giraffe cutter
because I would obviously want one of those!
I was lucky that for these cookies a sweet cookie friend had just sent
me a set of baby shower cutters. Looking at them, I had a few ideas right
away. I knew that my “main” cookie in
the set just had to revolve around my seed image of that line up of happy
giraffes, and when I saw the baby carriage I just could see the carriage of
baby giraffes! I liked the onesie cutter,
and the bib, but I had no love for that rattle cutter, or any need for the
bottle cutter….”UNLESS, hmmm”….I decided I could see making a plaque cookie
using the bottle cutter. Now I was up to
five cookies, and I had been thinking six designs total. I figured something on
a plaque, because I had a lot of “shaped” cookies in that set, and picked out
one of my favorites that was a good size match.
So how did I decide what to actually do on the cookies? It
was a mix of things. I had my idea for a
baby carriage full of giraffes, and I had some good cookie shapes. I decided to do the giraffe with heart spots
because I had seen that in a lot of different places and liked it. Then I had seen the cutest little letter “g”
that looked like a giraffe- perfect for the bib. I saw a great saying on a printable, and
thought that it would be a funny pun in the context of a baby shower for girl
babies. Onto the bottle “plaque” it
would go. Then I saw a baby jumper that
I LOVED. Must.cookie.onto.onesie! Finally, I saw a little dress on a hanger
with the baby shoes below, and it reminded me of a little jumper that I have
hanging in my son’s room- had to try that too!
A note here about attribution and using others’ art. A couple of my cookies were pretty direct designs
from the image I was looking at- the giraffes with hearts, and the onesie in
particular. The giraffe I wasn’t worried
about because I had seen it done so many times and it was a “generic” enough
idea that I wouldn’t be treading on toes to do it. (The giraffe cookies pictured here were done
by Powdered
Sugar Cheetah Cookies). The onesie I tracked down to a clothing line called
GNU- their 2013 line, and I personally wasn’t concerned about cookie-ing it for
this art project, where I’m not making any money off of it, but if it had been someone’s personal Etsy
shop, I would have gotten permission.
Similarly, the quote that I put on the bottles was from a printable by Sweet Mady’s Gifts on Etsy. I got the idea to use the quote this way
seeing it there, but the quote is not original to her. If I had decided to cookie the printable
image of the quote, I would have approached her as well to ask permission. No one has ever said I couldn’t make a cookie
out of their art, especially if I provide a link when I post it!
In all cases, I try and put my own spin on what I am cookie-ing. The onesie was the image I used most
directly, but I tried to think about how I could make it interesting in cookie
form. That’s where the idea to do part
of it wet on wet and then morph into icing on top of flood came from, just
thinking about how to best do the image on the cookie, and take advantage of
the opportunities of the medium. And I
love cookie-ing things I find like this, because it is a great way to explore
the image and why it is so appealing to me, without having to hoard a million
onesies and coffee mugs and Crate and Barrel plates just to keep appealing
objects and graphics in my life!
I picked the colors late in the process for me, drawing them
from my inspiration board on color mixing night (one bowl method, thank you Sugarbelle). At the time, I didn’t know the gender of all
the babies, so I needed to do both girl and gender neutral, so I just developed
a palette around that. In other
projects, I’ve used color palettes from Design Seeds or other online sources
*ahem, Pinterest*. Then I baked my
cookies- I REALLY franken-cookied that cart and giraffe one!!! Next I just piped what I knew I was doing. The carriages and giraffes, minus details on
the carriage. The g on the bib. The plaques with the patterns, taken from
various corners of my inspiration board.
Then I ran into my usual Day Two problem.
The problem with Day Two for me, and maybe for you, is that
I kind of hated my cookies. Like, a lot. Some of my great ideas had failed in
execution. Others were just boring and
unfinished. That one cookie had big cracks running through it. Not pretty.
So back to the ol’ Pinterest board.
I didn’t find anything right away, so I just kept paging through baby
shower cookies until I saw something pretty- a bunting cookie. But I already had so many elements in the
cookies, I decided that I would use the idea of bunting, but use hearts instead
of flags. Hearts had worked in other
places in the set, and it would make a cute motif. So I added heart “bunting” to my baby
carriages and bibs, and felt better about those. The rest of my mistakes I
tried to cover up with piping and whatnot.
Of course these were going to cookiers far more talented than I, so I
had to nick, ding or stick my finger in every single one! Finally, I sent them
off to the mamas-to-be.
I hope I haven’t bored you to tears with my long winded tale
of giraffe baby shower cookies! Last but
not least, here is the set I sent to a certain pregnant blog host, and I hope
that she knows how many good wishes we all have for her and her baby girl on
the way!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I LOVE hearing how other people's minds work! And my children happily ate all the giraffe cookies they could find. (Some of them may or may not have been hidden on the very top shelf.) Thank you SO much Rebecca!!
To see more of Rebecca's creations, visit her Facebook Page HERE. She also did a recent interview with NPR. Isn't that awesome? Check out the NPR Interview HERE.
To see more of Rebecca's creations, visit her Facebook Page HERE. She also did a recent interview with NPR. Isn't that awesome? Check out the NPR Interview HERE.
