Super Mario Brothers!

I was a big fan of Super Mario Brothers growing up.  I still remember when I got my old NES system for Christmas.  I don't think I was quite as excited as this kid, but I was pretty freakin' excited.  By far, the coolest game was Mario Brothers.  At least numbers 1 and 3, what the heck happened to #2?  That one was weird...
Anyway, I digress.

The point is, I love old Nintendo games.  They totally bring me back to my youth.  So, that being said, I wanted to keep these cookies in the old school 8-bit style.

Ironically, these were ordered by one of my very best friends from grade school.  I'm pretty sure whenever we were too lazy to walk to the local market for candy and pickles (weird I know, but true), or didn't feel like setting up the board for Mall Madness, we were playing NES (OK, or watching MTV, but don't tell my Mom that).

To make these cookies, I knew I was going to need my KopyKake projector, so I set about looking for the perfect images to use.  Luckily, my husband is very knowledgeable about video games (wow, I never thought I would use the word "luckily" in that sentence), so he helped me find a Super Mario Bros 3 sprite sheet online that literally has an image of every character in every possible pose.  The hardest part was choosing which images to use!

After I finally choose 12 images, I blew up them up in Photoshop to give them the signature grainy 8-bit quality.  Then I used my KopyKake projector to trace the outlines onto the cookies using black royal icing and a PME #1.5 tip.  I chose a blue background to mimic the background color of the game.

So, here are all of the final cookies:

Hospice Caring Logo

These dove and olive branch cookies were designed based on the logo for Hospice Caring, in Gaithersburg, MD.

Last year, I donated pink Chuck Taylor cookies to the hospice as part of the Frosting for the Cause project.

I really could not have chosen a better organization for that donation.  The people there are wonderful and I'm so happy that we've continued to work together.  I have a feeling I'll be dropping off some extra cookies for their volunteers very soon. 

Girly Cookies

These cookies were ordered recently as a Thank You gift.  The customer was so sweet and wanted to make sure she included something for each member of the family.

Mom is a hobby photographer and Dad likes to go fly fishing:

And their 2 little girls love everything girly!

Hopefully the whole family enjoyed this collection of cookies!

Many thanks to Ali Bee's Bake Shop, for her great tutorial on how to make the ruffles on the princess dresses.  I love the extra dimension they add.  I see many ruffly cookies in my future :)