Antique Bridal Shower Favors

Sometimes I love having free reign with cookie designs, and sometimes I find it very challenging.  This was one of the more challenging times for me.  

The request was for 15 bridal shower favors with a few different designs.  The cookies definitely had to include a copy of the invitation, which was a green background with a white birch tree, and a few of the square dress cookies that I've done before.  

I was happy to do more of the dress cookies since they're still one of my favorite designs.  I love things that are simple but elegant.  And in case you hadn't noticed, white and ivory are pretty much my favorite color scheme :)

The white birch cookies ended up being very fun to do, and I loved the way they turned out.  The invitation lettering was beautiful and I used the same font on the cookies.

The other cookies needed to include the bride's and groom's names, monogram, and date, but the design was left up to me.  The bride was going for a vintage feel for her wedding with black and pearl / sepia and cream color schemes.  I stuck to those colors and decided to include the green from her invitation in several of the cookies as well.

Whenever I'm able to take some artistic license with cookie designs I always try to do something new.  So, I tried out some white on ivory filigree piping thanks to the great tutorial from Sweet Ambs.  You can see it in the above picture, lower right cookie.  Overall, I liked the end result (and again, my favorite color scheme).  

I've been wanting to include a quatrefoil design for a while, so I gave it a shot on a few of the square cookies.  I also played with some brush embroidery on the borders of the round cookies below. 

I hope that all of the cookies fit in well with the bridal shower color scheme and vintage theme that the bride wanted.  And hopefully Chelsea and Frank enjoyed their cookies!

Classic Cars for a Cause

These cookies were donated to the UCP Philadelphia Motor Cars auction that took place at Citizen's Bank Park last week.  The auction was a fundraiser for the United Cerebral Palsy of Philadelphia organization, which helps to support children and adults living with cerebral palsy.

I designed the cookies based on actual cars that were going to be displayed during the event.  This was the 1963 Corvette Grand Sport:

This was was a 1912 Rauch and Lang Towncar.  I painted silver luster dust on some of the detailing and really liked the dimension that it created:

And this was the 1953 Chevrolet Corvette "Motorama":

The cookies were included in a gift basket along with several gift certificates, including one for Jaclyn's Cookies.  Hopefully they brought in a good price at the auction!

Vintage Baby Shower Favors

There are so many adorable baby shower themes out there right now.  All you have to do is follow Hostess with the Mostess and you'll be completely overwhelmed with ideas!  So, I love it when clients contact me with a specific theme in mind and then we can brainstorm cookie ideas together.  That's what happened when this client asked for cookie favors for an "Etsy" themed baby shower.



The customer wanted something very rustic, vintage, and crafty for the favors.  She knew the Mom-to-be was planning to decorate the nursery in a baby farm animal theme, so we combined those two ideas into these cookies!

The inspiration for the cookies came from these stickers on Etsy.  It was an absolutely adorable design and was easy to modify the jungle animals into ones that belong on a farm!



This project was fun for me because I got to play with an airbrush for the first time.  Thanks for letting me borrow yours, Steph!  I think I might need to invest in one of these in the future :)

And, as promised, I made sure that I left myself LOTS of time to take photos!

It's always tough for me to shoot in daylight since I work full time during the day, but I'm really making the effort to allow time for me to run home on my lunch break to shoot.  I really think it makes all the difference!




My new favorite props are the piece of burlap that I found in the Michael's scrapbooking section and this wicker bread basket that I had laying around the house.






I heard that these were a hit at the baby shower.  Congratulations Ashley and Jared on your new baby boy!

Spring Cleaning

I'm doing some "spring cleaning" this week and found lots of cookies that I never blogged.  So here's a mish-mosh of what I've been doing over the past several months!

These were some updated Facebook cookies to celebrate a big milestone for a popular restaurant chain:

Birthday cookies for Nurse Suzanne:

A new Mother's Day package (I loved this plaque design!):

A "thank you" cookie package that will hopefully make it onto the website soon:

More thank you cookies inspired by Cookies with Character:

And finally, cookies for a high school graduate who's going to be a freshman at Temple University next year:

My Arch Nemesis: Photographing Cookies

At Spring Fling this year, Glory from Glorious Treats gave a fantastic talk about photographing cookies.  If you haven't seen her site, you seriously need to go check it out.  It's beautiful.

She emphasized the importance of using natural light whenever possible, editing your photos, and experimenting with different setups, props, and angles.  She also made me realize that I almost never allow myself enough time to photograph my work.  Why would I spend 12 hours baking and decorating a collection of cookies, and spend 10 minutes photographing them!?  It really doesn't do them justice.  At all.  So I'm trying to allow myself more time for photography.

Glory taught us to layer cookies in a shot to give it more life and dimension.  I attempted to do that in this photo.  And oops, you can also see that I took Maryann's advice to use a piece of plastic wrap on your platter to prevent the cookies from slipping.  I'll have to remember to edit that out next time :)

Some wadded up pieces of aluminum foil were perfect to prop up the cookies for this shot.  Lace scrapbooking paper made for a prettier background than my standard white posterboard.

This was another attempt to layer cookies in a different way.  I made these cookies for my cousin's wedding and they were included in the hotel gift bags.  I thought that was such a great way to add a personal touch for all of the out of town guests.

And finally, my addition of a prop - the beautiful wedding invitation.  This was my "one pine cone" as Glory would say.  I think it's my favorite shot!

Obviously these photos are nowhere near perfect and they aren't even close to the fabulous photos on  Glorious Treats and other beautiful food blogs out there.  But hopefully you'll continue to see my photography evolve as I get braver with different props and layouts and learn more about my camera and Photoshop.  Big thank you to Glory for showing me the importance of photography and for pushing me to improve!