Last week I shared a few Zentangle-inspired cookies that contained a little simple flower in their design. Today I use that pattern and another simple flower sketch as the base for this set of cookies.
All designs were demonstrated in the youtube channel 15 minutes of Zen, that I discussed in my previous post. I used a food pen to draw the flower over white or red cookies, but you can also use different colors of pen over white or other backgrounds.
The exact pattern can be applied with piping consistency icing over a naked cookie, so that those who prefer less sugar will be happy.
I sprayed PME pearl luster over the whole cookie to give it a little shine…
I also used black piping consistency icing to incorporate this flower on pastel purple iced cookies… And the additional flower pattern was made using a fine tip food safe pen. Piping that one would be a bit tricky, I think…
Drawing these motifs is really easy and relaxing, and as I mentioned before, it always looks ok in the end, no matter what happens…
I hope you give the 15 minutes of Zen youtube a try, even if you are not into cookie decorating. Just a blank small piece of paper, a pencil, and a nice relaxing break for your mind…
. If you’ve been around my cookie blog, you probably know that I am a huge fan of the Zentangle method of drawing. The amount of inspiration available in Instagram, Pinterest, and the number of tutorials in youtube is quite amazing, so I advise you to grab a cup of tea and browse around. Not too long ago I found this youtube channel and fell in love with it. Every day, Kelli demonstrates one “tile” (Zentangle drawings are called tiles as they are usually made in 2 inch or larger square sheets of paper) that takes no longer than 15 minutes to make. Keep in mind that when doing it on paper, you can add a lot of shading and details, when I do it in cookies it is simpler and therefore faster. But equally relaxing and rewarding. I share with you today just a few examples using her tutorials, and some departures I did on my own. All cookies must be flooded and fully set, and then you need a fine tip black pen. I often use PME pearl spray to give the cookie a final shine, but that is not mandatory.
Then I made a second one using only two zentangle motifs from the first one…
Next, one of my favorites, following this TULIP tutorial from Kelli. It became one of my favorite designs!
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The top right is a pattern called TAXI, and you can see her demonstrating it here…..
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I love how changing the background color has a huge impact on the design, and even if you mess up something, it always ends up ok in the end. Or so I believe…
My Dad would love these cookies! He collected this type of rocks, I remember having a bunch of them around, of all sizes and colors, although I think he was partial to the amethyst and its gorgeous purple. Some were really big and extremely heavy, so they stayed in the same place in the living room, and were dusted from time to time. I can still picture them in my mind.
These cookies are really easy to make. All you need is rock sugar, available online or maybe you can even find it at your grocery store. I ordered this one. You will need to place some in a bag and crush it a bit so that you’ll have smaller pieces. Then all you need is to flood your cookies with white Royal icing, immediately place the sugar crystals on top in any pattern you like. Wait at least 6 hours to paint with diluted gel color (I used vodka to dilute). Finally, a little gold luster and that’s all! I also added gold luster in a fine splatter all over the cookie, but that is optional. It does make a bit of a mess on the countertop!
These would be great in many colors, but I am partial to purple. They will always bring memories of my Dad.
You have NO IDEA how excited I am about this! As I’ve mentioned before, without the aid of a mini-projector, my cookie decorating would be quite limited, as I cannot draw to save my life. However, not too long ago I was minding my own business when Facebook shared a little advertisement for an online course called “Pattern Painting”, by Yvette St Amant. I was intrigued, browsed a bit and decided to try it. A whole new universe opened up for me! It is basically playing with patterns, colors, shapes. No need for precision, or any drawing skill. It felt absolutely liberating, and what she taught on a white canvas, I started using on a Royal iced cookie base. With this post, I invite you to see some of the things I’ve played with lately. After each design, just a few words to explain the specific technique I used.
HEXAGONS
Hexagons iced in white. Food safe pens used to paint stripes and details. I inverted the colors in half of the cookies, to give it a bit of the yin-yang thing I love so much.
BLACK AND RED
I love this shape! Cookies were again iced with white, and after the background is fully set I used food safe pens to draw.
SUGARPRISM PAINTED FLORALS
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To help me with this design, I used a stencil, and scratched the outline of the flowers before painting with Sugarprism. Sugarprism goes well over even a dark background, making it perfect for this type of pattern.
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MODERN ABSTRACT, TWO WAYS
This was actually the first set of cookies I made using Yvette’s tutorials. For this set I used two different methods: adding the design with Royal icing piped in sections, or painting with Sugarprism Below, the steps for the first approach.
Decide on the pattern and do an outline with white. Fill the white areas right away, wait about 15 minutes and add the other colors, in this case green and pink. Let that set again for a few minutes, and finally cover the center with a contrasting color of your choice. In a few hours I added the black outline with a food safe pen.
. A totally different look for the same design, is achieved by flooding the whole cookie with white, then painting the pattern with Sugarprism.
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TURQUOISE CIRCLES
Another design idea I got from Yvette’s tutorials. Royal icing white for the background, and a food safe pen to add details. I love this type of abstract pattern, and intend to go on exploring it.
BEES AND VINES
I confess I did not know where I was going with these cookies, but love the way they turned out. Once again, Royal icing white for the background, and a food safe pen to do all the details.
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GEOMETRIC VIBES
These were my own design, maybe not exactly pattern painting, but a departure from the idea. I used a ruler to draw a few straight random lines on the cookie (iced in white), then painted the sections in contrasting colors. The outline was painted again after the colors were added, for a more polished look.
BLACK AND WHITE
Another design of my own, a mixture of zentangle with colors. Below you see how that came to life. The center was iced in pink, the margins in white. Next day the black details were painted with a food safe pen.
Another example of zentangle to close this series… Two black, two silver.
Super simple to draw, and no matter the boo-boos you might make, the cookie will look interesting in the end.
I hope you will consider pattern painting as a cool option to decorate cookies. No two will be alike and they are sure to bring a smile to anyone who gets them. And I do mean, anyone!
This online tutorial by Tunde Dugantsi was posted on January 5th, but I was away on a trip. The moment I came back I went to work, baking the seven hexagon cookies and making enough icing to play with them all. Truth is, after being away I was a bit rusty, and struggled a little with a couple of the designs. Still, I love this set, and felt that the class was at the same time challenging and fun. Tunde has a very soothing voice and is quite reassuring, plus she gives many tips to help you navigate all the different techniques. In this set, we had to master fine lines (very fine, to pipe a grid on two cookies), brush embroidery, border piping, and of course, smooth flooding.
To join Tunde’s Facebook page and learn about her upcoming classes, click here.
Tunde planned the whole class in a very efficient way. We started by flooding two cookies in a single color (light and dark blue), and the others had a design scratched on the surface, so that two colors would be used to flood, in stages. or a single color leaving a round circle in the center to pipe the grid. Some of the steps are shown in the composite picture below.
After I baked the cookies, I realized that my hexagons were a little bit smaller than the ones Tunde used. It was no big deal for most of the patterns, but for the grid, bigger would have worked better. We were supposed to pipe a beautiful snowflake design, but I did not have enough squares in my grid to do that, so I improvised a much simpler pattern. You can see them below….
For the brush embroidery, Tunde showed two different designs, but I could only make one of them work. I will definitely try the second one in the near future. The four cookies below were definitely my favorites!
I find the combination of dark and light blue pretty magical, and the white details take it all to a higher level.
I had a few hexagon cookies left, and a couple of days later I decided to bring the center cookie back to life with a different color scheme.
I really want to re-visit this whole class, now that I am back into the swing of decorating. My goal is to make the snowflake design on the grid, and then tackle the second embroidery cookie, which has a beautiful single rose in the center, with a long stem. The shaping of the petals is not that easy for me, but I want to make that happen.
Tunde, thank you for another great tutorial, I learned a lot with this one…
Every weekend I like to work on a special cookie decorating project, either to learn a new technique or to practice something I still feel insecure about. But I also like to have a set of cookies waiting without any specific design in mind. My favorite approach is to just pick some simple shapes (squares, ovals, circles) and flood them with white or a very light pastel tone Royal Icing. Next day they are ready to be decorated. The possibilities are pretty much endless. Today I share a series of cookies in which the starting point was a simple white background.
DESIGN #1 STRIPES & DETAILS
Maybe my favorite of this series… I used food safe pens to paint a series of bands of color, then used piping consistency icing to add little details. Super basic. Inspiration came from painted rocks, if you go on Instagram or Pinterest you can find a ton of designs to inspire you.
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DESIGN #2 STRIPES & FONDANT ACCENTS
A lot simpler to do because the stripes don’t need to be precisely separated, I just used luster powder in 4 different colors to paint the background. Fondant shells in gold complete the look.
Even simpler, stripes can be added with a fan type brush, just touches of gold coupled with a modern fondant flower (made with this mold)
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DESIGN #3 MINI-PROJECTOR
So many images available in the internet or in coloring books, just google something, grab your projector and go to work… Lately, I’ve been a little focused on a certain breed of dog… The one below was painted with food safe pens and the bubbles added with piping consistency Royal icing.
The two images below were “borrowed” from one of my favorite pages in Instagram, Jillfcsrocks. And no worries, she is aware that I get her images on my cookies… She is also a cookie-maker! They were painted with Sugarprism.
Another cookie painted with Sugarprism, this one demanded a little more time, but I had fun letting my inner Van Gogh coming out (cough, cough).
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DESIGN #4 STENCILS
Probably the easiest, most efficient way to decorate a cookie, coupling stencils with the air-brush. My main advice is to invest on a screen (like this one) to get really sharp edges on the design. That is not too important in busy patterns such as the black random spots, but it will help other types of drawings like the paw prints and the dragon. Are you watching House of Dragons? Fun show…
Stencils can also be joined with piping in white and then painted. Probably the most involved decorating method of all the examples in this post. When you couple it with painting (in this case, Sugarprism), it is a very nice way to get a more realistic image. Big thank you for Marlyn from @montrealconfections for helping me with the design of this stencil.
Today I share three different ways to decorate cookies using Sugarprism, starting from the simplest version…
DESIGN #1 – YELLOW FLOWERS
For these cookies, my inspiration were flowers I saw in my walking-jogging route. Intense orange, with a reddish center. I iced the 8 petal flower shape with orange, and once that set I drew a circle that was iced with chocolate brown plus a touch of red. Once that set overnight, I painted the details with Sugarprism red, and finally added little dots of Royal icing in bright yellow.
It is a very simple design, maybe the trickiest part is adding the little yellow dots, because the consistency of the icing has to be just right. It is a good idea to practice on a piece of parchment paper, so that you can adjust with water or powdered sugar if necessary.
DESIGN #2 – MODERN STICK FIGURE
I fell in love with this image the moment I saw it on the Instagram page of Kathy Barbro, who teaches drawing for kids. I knew I had to “cookie it.” So I started with a Royal iced white background, and drew the design with a light food pen. Then I used Sugarprism to paint the different sections, and once that was fully dry, I went over the design and details with a black food pen. You can see some of the phases in the composite below
Little black dots with Royal icing made for a fun border that complemented the design well, I think.
DESIGN #3 – SINGLE STROKE PAINTING
I consider these cookies a work in progress. If you go on youtube and search for “single stroke painting”, you’ll find many wonderful examples, and many tutorials trying to teach you how to do it. They make it seem very easy, but clearly, there is a steep learning curve. Basically, you load two different colors on opposite sides of a flattish brush, press the brush on the surface and twist it to form a petal. I made a “canvas” of royal icing to practice and – full disclosure – my countertop once I was done with the cookies looked like a war zone!
It is a fun technique to work with. I intend to keep trying and also work on different types of flowers and leaves. So expect to see more of my amateurish attempts featured here… Lolita, the flamingo, does not mind, she actually seems quite smitten with my painting!
If you want to play with Sugarprism, visit Michelle’s website with a click here.
As far as a high-impact design requiring very basic piping skills, you cannot beat marbled icing. These cookies were all made with this technique designed by Haniela. You can use anywhere from five to seven colors, but I made some using only four. The marbling is not as dramatic in the end, but the cookies are still quite beautiful. You can use one single color and simply vary the intensity, or add two different colors, each in two or three shades. It all starts with piping the outline (using the darkest color), then some horizontal guide lines to separate the blocks of repeating tones. Working quickly, pipe lines of each color and marble them in two directions using a needle. Piping the border is optional, but it does make the cookie more elegant.
Below, some of the steps to make this type of cookie…
The piping of the stripes does not have to be perfect, as everything will get mixed up by marbling. The only thing to keep in mind is working reasonably fast, otherwise the icing will start to set and it won’t pull smoothly, the surface will be all bumpy.
The same design using brown-orange-red tones…
Some of the borders I left white, some I painted with bronze…
For these cookies I used 6 different colors, including white. In some cookies I omitted the white, using just the other colors.
Finally, a blue series, with border in gold luster.
I love this cookie shape. It is perfect for marbling, but works with many different designs also.
Today I share five designs for square cookies, a shape that I think is under-estimated. Square cookies offer lots of possibilities for cookie decorating, and can also be grouped together to create a composite image. Remember the Quilt Challenge proposed by Marlyn a few months ago? When Marlyn did her version, she turned a simple square cookie into a quilt design made complete by joining four of the basic pieces together. Super clever! So to kick things off, I share my version of Marlyn’s Quilt cookie. I simply changed the color scheme and a few details.
DESIGN #1 – MARLYN’S QUILT
For a geometric pattern such as this to work well, you have to draw guiding lines on the naked cookie as a starting point. Then use piping consistency black to make a reasonably thick outline of all sections, add details with fine lines. As you can see below, I started with a yellow draft but made a few mistakes, so I started all over with a black pen. It all gets hidden by the icing, so no major harm done.
Once the outline and fine lines are set, it’s time to proceed with the flooding, using any decoration and color scheme of your choice.
It is fun to see the full design come to life as the cookies are placed together…
DESIGN #2 – COLORFUL TILES
For this design, I used a stencil downloaded from Cricut workspace, and a very light sheen airbrush color to paint it on a white flooded cookie. Next, I highlighted all details using several different colors of food safe pens, and added a little outline with black.
Since the sheen color is so subtle, it does not really interfere with the painting… The sheen color I used is from this set. For these cookies I opted for Blue Sheen.
DESIGN #3 – GRADUATION COOKIES
Once again, stencils come to the rescue… Another image downloaded from Cricut Workspace, I made these for a friend’s daughter who graduated last month. With a bonus round cookie, just because…
Similarly to the Colorful Tiles, I used a stencil air-brushed with a sheen orange color, and went over the details with food pen.
DESIGN #4 – MODERN WHITE SQUARES
I was inspired by Connie, a member of the Great British Bake Off group from Facebook. It was her first time decorating sugar cookies, and she came up with a design I loved, very elegant and polished. Monochromatic. Clean. This is my version of her cookies.
Cookies are flooded with white royal icing, and then the details are piped, with a few silver sprinkles added while the icing is wet.
DESIGN #5 – FUN WITH PROJECTOR
Recently I stumbled on this IG page and almost lost my mind with the amazing drawings she does on rocks. I contacted her to see how she fell about some of her images turning up in cookies, and she was fine with it, in fact she also makes cookies herself! These were my first versions, I particularly adore the meditating frog… I think the square shape is perfect to this type of cute design.
That’s all for now, folks! I hope I gave you some ideas to play with using a very basic cookie shape, that can be arranged in sets of four, potentially expanding the horizons of the final composition.
A couple of months ago Haniela showcased in one of the Facebook lives a cool idea she had to decorate sugar cookies. She used thin strips of parchment paper that are laid on top of wet Royal icing. Then the cookies are decorated either with wet-on-wet, or other painting techniques. The final step is pulling off the paper strips, which of course only happens next day, when the icing if fully set. I know that it’s not easy to visualize the technique from this description, but once you see the step by step, it will become clear. Her full video tutorial is available here. I was so excited about the technique, that I made a few cookies a couple of days later. Today’s post is a series of cookies made in March and April with variations of her basic method.
For this tile-cookie, it started with white Royal icing to flood the entire surface, and then the paper stripes were placed in a geometric pattern.
The composite below shows the steps – I let the icing set and used luster powder to paint, with the strips of paper still glued. Then, pulling the paper reveals the white underneath.
As you can imagine, the possibilities of colors and designs are endless, and so much fun to play with!
It all starts with making the strips of paper. Using a very thin blade, cut strips on parchment paper, try to do them of equal width, but some variation is ok, you can even incorporate that in the design. Once you have plenty of strips available, you can start flooding the cookies and coming up with ways to decorate.
The ones below were made following her tutorial a little more closely, starting with hexagons and using wet-on-wet to create the design.
Some of the steps you can see below (but keep in mind Haniela’s tutorial on Facebook is the best way to follow the technique).
Another thing she demonstrated in the video was using a special type of scissors (available here) to cut the strips, so that the edges get wavy. I love the end result! Using the scissors is a little more involved, but not too bad.
To make this Ukraine-inspired cookie, I cut the strips a little larger, added to turquoise Royal icing, and next day painted some areas with gold. The sunflower is a fondant addition. The picture below show this cookie in its initial stage.
I hope this post gave you some ideas to play in the future. There are so many ways to incorporate the paper strips into designs, and once you have them all cut, the hard work is done. It’s all downhill from there.
Haniela, thank you for the tutorial, I had a ton of fun playing with your concept…
For the Love of Cookies 