Tea Party Bridal Shower

These cookie favors were made for a tea party themed bridal shower.  The tea pot cookies were modeled after the invitation.

I loved the peach, mint green and light pink color scheme for this shower.

Nautical Wedding Shower Cookie Favors

OK!  Last nautical cookies this year, I promise.

These were cookie favors that I did for a bridal shower on Long Island this summer.  I loved the crisp navy and white color scheme with pops of hot pink.

This is definitely one of those times that the photo doesn't live up to how beautiful the cookies were :(  I really need to leave myself more photography time!

Elegant Bridal Shower cookies

I loved this platter of champagne, gold, black, and red bridal shower cookies for Jillian and Steve.

The shower vibe was very glamorous, with lots of ivory and metallic gold with red accents.  The bridesmaids' dresses were champagne with black lace details, which made for beautiful cookie designs.  And they were serving champagne with red sugared rims, so that was easy to cookify :)

I also did heart and wedding cake favors for the guests to take home.

Congratulations Jillian and Steve!

Will you be my bridesmaid?

A bride ordered several gift boxes with these cookies to give to her bridesmaids and maid of honor.  I think it's such a sweet way to ask your friends to be a part of your wedding!

Her wedding colors will be navy and pink, and her flowers will be daisies, so we incorporated those elements in the designs.

Wedding Cookie Favors

I was looking through my photos and can't believe I never posted these!

These were wedding favors that I did way back in August of 2013.  They were created to match the invitation and I just loved the way that border looked!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day and congratulations to Jan and Jeff who are getting married today!

Bunco!

Since it's Friday, and I'm off to play Bunco tonight, I thought it would be appropriate to share these Bunco cookies!  

These are big ole' 3 inch square dice cookies that I made for a Bunco-themed bridal shower.  If you're not familiar with Bunco, it's a super fun, no skill required dice game that (along with some wine) makes a really fun neighborhood get together :)

Happy Friday everyone!

Birch Tree Cookies

These elegant birch tree cookies were created for a bridal shower.  I've done them before with a green background as part of these antique bridal shower cookies, but I just love how the purple background really made these cookies pop.

I also love the little Philadelphia LOVE statue "carving" that was added to the tree.  My husband and I had LOVE cookies as the favors at our wedding, so they'll always have a special place in my heart :)

Congratulations Kelly and Michael!

Wedding Bells

We'll keep this post short and sweet so that I can finish it before nap time ends!  These were bridal shower cookies that I made over the summer.  Beth and Tim's wedding date is fast approaching, so I thought that it was about time I posted these cookies!

The shower colors were navy and white and they wanted to include a simple wedding bell design in one corner of the cookie. 

I've been trying to broaden my photography horizons, so I took lots of photos of these cookies!  Stay tuned for more photos of me trying to use props :)

Henna-Inspired Wedding Cookies

I have to admit, I was really excited to work on this order and I really love the final result.  These cookies were requested for a bridal shower in the DC area.  The bride's family is from Bangladesh and several traditions such as henna tattoos were planned for the wedding.

The cookie platter incorporated the color scheme of the shower, hot pink and gold (LOVE), and various henna-inspired designs.  I added a few pops of white in the platter as well to break up all that pink.

All of the gold piping was done in yellow icing and then hand-painted with gold luster dust.  It's labor intensive but worth the extra effort!

The shower favors were a mix of hearts and wedding cakes.  They included the same henna designs and the couple's initials.  My client was kind enough to send some images of the cookies displayed at the shower which you can see on my Facebook page here.  I love seeing my cookies out "in the wild"!  Don't they look beautiful arranged with the other favors?

Before starting these cookies, I scoured the internet looking at various henna designs trying to choose the styles I wanted to use for the cookies.  What's your favorite design?  I think I really like the leaf style in the upper right cookie.  I'm sure there's all sorts of meanings associated that I'm completely ignorant to.  Hopefully they were appropriate for a bridal shower!

Here's a close up of two more of the platter cookies.  These are two of the more traditional wedding designs that I thought would work well as favors for any wedding or shower.

I hope that you all enjoyed these cookies as much as I did making them.  Best wishes Amira and Brian!

*Update 10/4/13*  Now you can buy these henna-inspired favors in our Etsy shop!

Starfish Bridal Shower Favors

100 of these starfish cookies were requested for a yellow and gray bridal shower.  That was a lot of dots!!

Big thanks to Glory from Glorious Treats for letting me use her starfish design!

Tropical Engagement Cookies

I made these cookies last summer for my good friend's bridal shower.  If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you might remember these cookies that I made for her engagement party last year.

Her wedding was in the Florida keys, so we stuck to a tropical theme for the shower. After a miserable attempt at stamping the Palm trees onto the cookies, I decided to go with brush embroidery for the Palm leaves.  It definitely was more time consuming than the stamp that I was originally planning to use, but I was happy with how they turned out.  Sometimes you just have to come up with a plan B when things aren't going your way :)

Barbie and Ken Silhouettes

It's no secret that I LOVE working with bright colors, so these cookies were no exception!  My Americolor electric color gels definitely get the most use of all of my food coloring gels.

I'm still digging through the archives and found the pictures of these cookies.  They were a last minute order for a coed Barbie and Ken themed bridal shower.  As usual, I was happy that I have a KopyKake projector so that I could complete the order quickly!

Overall I thought they were a fun idea and liked how they turned out.  I hope the bride and groom-to-be had a great time at their shower!

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!

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!

Brush Embroidery Shower Favors

As you might imagine, I'm typically responsible for providing the favors for any parties that my family hosts these days!  So, these were the cookies that I made for a bridal shower that my Mom hosted a few weeks ago:

I included the bride's first initial "N" in Edwardian Script (using my KopyKake projector ) accented with a brush embroidered flower in her wedding colors.  Don't worry if you don't have a projector, you can get the same result by tracing the letters and make royal icing transfers.

I've gotten so much inspiration from Ali Bee lately, first with these ruffle cookies, and now with brush embroidery!  I've been wanting to try this technique for a while and thought this would be the perfect opportunity.

Overall I thought it was fun to do and I was happy with my first attempt.  I can't wait to get more practice this weekend at Spring Fling with the master herself!!