I think it's clear that I have a bit of an obsession with gold and brushes right now. And when I saw these CLICK-TWIST BRUSHES ...they seemed to be the perfect mix of the two. So naturally I ordered 5 of them. These brushes are SUCH a great concept. They are like pre-loaded water brushes . But unlike water brushes...they actually work with metallic and pearl colors. I was worried that the metallics would have been watered down to make them work, but they are actually a pretty good, thick coverage. To make the color come down into the brush, you have to twist the end. When you first get the brush, you'll have to twist it a few times before the coloring comes out. Keep an eye on the tip of the brush. It doesn't come out in a thin stream -- it's more like each twist releases a little glob of color. Don't be impatient like me and twist it a bunch or you'll end up with a ton of coloring coming out all at once. The biggest downside to these brushes is that t
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Easy Embellishments for a Plaque Cookie
Sometimes I plan my cookies down to the very last speck of a detail. And sometimes my plans go awry. And sometimes they are perfect. And sometimes a cookie just happens. I will often make an extra plaque cookie for a set "just in case" I feel like using it. I generally will experiment on these plaque cookies or just "whip something up" real quick. But if we're being completely honest here, without a plan... there's really only a 1 in 7 chance that the plaque cookie makes it any where near human eyes before it's untimely demise. The "Easter" cookie I made in this set was a hastily whipped up gem that actually turned out to be surprisingly usable. I used a doodling...uh... technique I learned in high school while NOT learning math. (I also learned how to legitimately twirl my pencil. Ask me sometime...I'll show you!) It pretty much happened without even thinking... I was just listening to my husband NOT tell me about his day, (Serio
How To Make Scribble Candle Cookies
I don't really remember kindergarten. I mean, I know there was a yellow table that involved scissors and for a brief time - glue. And then someone (not me) showed everyone in the class how to put glue on their hands to make snake skin...and that was officially the end of the glue at the yellow table. And really, that's all I've got for kindergarten. So really...I'm the furthest thing from a Kindergarten Expert that you could imagine. My first child was a boy-child. He went to an all day kindergarten in another country where they got snacks, 3 recesses, and watched "Magic School Bus" and took naps after lunch. Kindergarten was basically a dream come true for that kid. Which did NOT prepare me for kindergarten in the real world. And by "real world" I mean "with girls". Seriously, when did kindergarten get to be such a high-pressure environment? The girl has 11 pairs of shoes, and STILL doesn't have the right shoes for Tuesdays.
Fantastic Find Friday -- Tri-Color Coupler
I'm actually not sure what brand came up with these TRI-COLOR COUPLERS to begin with. I've seen them all over being sold under different labels. I've wanted to try them since last spring when I made the camouflage cookies with....3 bags inside another bag. You put the coupler inside a bag like any other coupler. Then you take 3 bags of icing and slide each one through a slot in the coupler. Pull them firmly out through the tip and close the exterior bag with an elastic or clip to keep pressure on the interior bags. At this point, if you have a medium size tip (Normal cookie decorating tips like #1 or #3 are all small size tips. a 2D or a 1M are medium size tips.) I don't have a medium size tip that is round...so I just didn't use a tip. When you are ready to use the icing, cut the end off each of the interior bags and go for it. It took me about 7 seconds to make this brightly colored camouflage egg cookie. Although... I can't for the life of
How to Make Decorated Nest Cookies for Spring
Remember when you were a kid and your grandparents lived like 7 jillion miles away and you were pretty sure the drive took at least a week? And that was back before they had things like DVD players in cars, or ipods or running water. So all you had to make time go faster was something called "The Alphabet Game." And when they took down the billboard for "Quality Inn" 3 towns over, the only option you had left was watching for the mile markers and pretending like you were deaf so you didn't end up in the middle of some boy argument about dinosaurs. Except, on the way back...if you shut your eyes for just a second...you magically appeared in your own driveway. And then you grow up. And get all adult-y. And go to college classes with 900 other people. And staying awake during class is not only not possible because of all the...umm..."studying" you were doing the night before, but it's not even desirable anymore. You know, because you're jus
How To Make Quick and Easy Gold Speckled Easter Egg Cookies
Someone please explain to me how in THE WORLD people clean their houses with children around. I'm serious. I'm at Desperation Level: Infinity Twelve. I feel like I'm in some kind of twisted Hansel and Gretel story. I walk around picking up the bread crumbs and these short little creatures come behind me and put them all back again as quickly as I can pick them up. And "bread crumbs" isn't a metaphor for all their book bags and homework papers and socks and shoes and blankets and stuffed animals and toys and necklaces and hair brushes and paper airplanes. I'm talking about ACTUAL bread crumbs... because apparently eating at a table will give them the plague and must be avoided at all costs. So I'm endlessly washing spoons, navigating Lego minefields and secretly, desperately hoping that anyone who happens to drop by will believe me when I say that they can't come in because my real house is on vacation in Tahiti and the substitute house doesn
Fantastic Find Friday -- European 10-Petal Rose Piping Tips
Have you seen the European/Russian flower piping tips? It seems like they are EVERYWHERE I look these days!! I just want to own them and try them out and love them...I mean... tell me you don't feel the same way. Seriously -- just try it. I'll wait. LIAR-LIAR-PANTS-ON-FIRE!!! You couldn't even look me in the eyes while saying it. But there is something about the $49/set price tag that's been holding me back. When I saw them for sale individually at How Sweet Is That? I lost my mind and spent hours trying to decide which ones to get- there were so many options to choose from! In the end...I could really only see myself actually using the 10-Petal Rose tip. So I got a couple of those. I made some basket cookies this week and figured it was the perfect time to try these out! I decided to try it out with some extra white icing I had...you know...just lying around. I was surprised to find that even though most listings say they will fit "standard coupler
How To Make Decorated Easter Basket Cookies
Remember how I was all like, "I love Spring. It's warm and fun"? It snowed that day. And I'm pretty sure it was on purpose. And I had to move heavy furniture in the snow. Up hill. Both ways. And then today the snow melted and it was so hot in my car and I was ABSOLUTELY convinced that it was really and truly spring. I was so certain that I took every single one of my four children with me to the garden store. (I'm telling you -- I think Spring has brainwashed me. I made myself promise last year not to take any of them to the garden store with me ever again....something about the baby chicks that were accidentally set loose in the store.) (I actually don't know why there are baby chicks at the garden store. That wasn't really the point. The point is - I've lost my mind and it's all Spring's fault.) My daughters promised to be on their best behavior this time and within seconds were doing ballet leaps in the middle of the parking lot..
Decorated Leprechaun Hat Cookies for St. Patrick's Day
There is so much to love about spring. I mean, IT'S WARM. That alone should be enough to celebrate spring like it's a chocolate cake at a surprise party. But on top of that, spring is also NOT winter. Which means that the dull gray snow covering my entire world has magically shifted into GREEN GRASS! And it stays light so much longer. I don't have to plan my entire day around the 12 minutes between 12:17 and 12:29 to take photos. And, AND...my children's clothing choices have a solid 4 weeks in the no-judgement-zone. My daughter wants to wear shorts and sandals and a winter coat? TOTALLY MAKES SENSE. My son refuses to wear a jacket of any kind on account of him being "immune" to cold even though it is currently snowing and/or hailing ? That's okay too. Even when they are standing together at the same time...spring just makes everything okay somehow. It also explains the plastic bird cage filled with grass, hanging from my tree
Fantastic Find Friday -- Crystal Colors Gold Dusts
Remember my complete adoration of all things shiny? I do not see that going away any time soon. But lately there has been a lot of talk about which metallic food products are *actually* safe to eat and if you should be using them on cookies in the US if they aren't FDA approved. I thought I was going to have to give up entirely on my quest for the perfect shiny, food-safe gold until I heard about Crystal Colors gold dusts from Anne at Flour Box Bakery . And naturally ordered them 3 seconds later. Crystal Colors dusts are FDA approved and there are at least 3 different shades of gold dust that I found. It comes in GOLD, ANTIQUE GOLD, and BLUSH GOLD. I got the first two...and now I wish I would have ordered a blush gold too! The first thing that I noticed is that the dust containers are substantially bigger than the tiny luster dust containers I'm used to. It looked like it was at least twice the size and completely full of dust. I did an online ounce to grams conversio
How To Make Personalized Egg Cookies For Easter
Remember Christmas? Or should I say - Remember that one month of your life that you made cookies every waking minute and didn't see your dining room table for weeks on end and you kind of forgot your own name there for a while before you collapsed into bed and got actual sleep? There may have also been candy canes. And hot chocolate. The month of December usually ruins me for cookies until about June. And by then it's warm outside and all I can think about is breathing actual air that isn't laced with sugar and flour so I really don't come back to cookies until the fall. Which is probably why I start posting Halloween cookies in August. And why I have 8 million of them...and exactly 3 Easter designs. I don't know what happened this year...but I'm ALL OVER the Easter designs. I've got more ideas than there are days before Easter. And I'm not being a braggy-pants. I just want to figure out how it happened so I can do it again. Because if we'r
How To Make Decorated Easter Chick Cookies
My 4 year old likes to write blog posts with me. She sits next to me on the couch with her little purple computer that makes animal noises and types away with her little fingers like she's getting paid by the letter. Usually she only last for a few minutes though and it quickly devolves into a series of elephant trumpets and buzzing bees while she is lying the floor trying to simultaneously wear my shoes on her hands like puppets and kicking me to the rhythm of Jingle Bells. Except last time, she just sat there next to me staring at the wall. I just figured she was falling asleep. And then... out of nowhere...she says, " But we didn't even bring the canned corn ." And then I stopped writing a blog post because I needed to squish her. And also because I could not FOR THE LIFE OF ME figure out what she could have possibly been thinking about in that little brain of hers. And then we ate Easter cookies together. Specifically these adorable little chicks. They a
Fantastic Find Friday -- Pentel Water Brush
A long time ago in a dream called Cookie Con, Arty McGoo showed me her water brush. And every time she wrote with it...magic came out. So as you can imagine, I was pretty determined to get one for myself. I searched high and low, traveling to at least 2 craft stores, but was unable to procure this enchanted tool. So I bought one on Amazon and waited by the window for it to arrive. My daughters joined me and one of them got tangled up in the curtains, so I decided to just to regular person stuff until it was delivered. And when the pen finally came...I ripped open the packaging and filled it with black food coloring and sat down with my stack of practice paper, ready for the magic to come. AND IT DID!! It really was as magical in person. Confused? Let's start with the basics. The water brush consists of an empty (refillable) plastic barrel and a brush at the end. It was originally designed to use with...water. But Arty McGoo puts airbrush coloring in the barrel of her wate
How To Make Decorated Burlap Bunny Cookies For Easter
(UPDATE -- GIVEAWAY CLOSED!!!!) I've never been one of those people that just runs out and buys everything I could possibly need for a new hobby. I'm not much of a shopper and I definitely don't have that impulse to get whatever is new on the market just to try it out...you know... in the name of science, and then give one away every -- Oh. Wait. Yeah. Ummm... that pretty much describes me exactly. (Shoot. Don't tell my husband!) And I kind of love new places to shop as much as I love new products. So when my friend Anne of Flour Box Bakery opened her online shop ... I could NOT have been happier!! It's everything I love all in one place! Friends, cookies and shopping!!! She's got a great selection of supplies...including an FDA APPROVED GOLD DUST!! It's called Crystal Dust and I just ordered some and I can't wait to try it out!! I was in a little bit of an Easter rut this year until I saw all of her Easter Cutters and then my mind basicall