Upcoming Mother’s Day and orchids are the inspiration for this month's tutorial design. It couldn’t be any other flower, as I am currently living in Thailand where orchids are everywhere, in every color and in every shape. In fact...
Following a particularly wet winter, California is officially drought-free! I think any native Californian meets this news with both gratitude as well as a little skepticism. I’ve lived here most of my life, and I can’t remember a time when we weren’t experiencing some degree of drought...
Easter is just around the corner, so I thought I’d make a chocolate Easter bunny cookie (or an egg with a pair of ears, in actuality)! This project is super easy, as it's done simply by combining basic cookie cutter shapes and decorating techniques. We'll use egg cutters to make the bunny's face and ears, and then we'll...
In the last few years that I lived in Italy, tiny wooden boxes of strawberries made their appearance in the grocery store by the middle of February. They were imported, as it was too early for strawberries in Italy. They were so colorful and so neatly arranged in their wooden boxes...
Even though I am now living in Thailand where it is currently 85°F (29°C), I haven't forgotten the cold of winter, which many of you are now experiencing. So, I thought, what better way to get cozy than with felt warmers on hot cocoa (cookie) mugs?!...
Years ago, I received two mini hot water bottles from my sister. They had plain knitted covers. One of them was red with a white heart on the front, and the other had the same knitted cover with the colors inverted. (They were too cute together for my sister to buy only one of them!) This memory...
I’ve mentioned previously my experiments with stained glass cookies. Cooked sugar was one of the obvious contenders to create the look, but I was hoping to avoid the stark contrast between crunchy, hard sugar and relatively soft cookie. So I set about concocting...
This year's 3-D Christmas tree cookie was inspired by a project that my kids made in elementary school: a Christmas tree composed of stacked cardboard tubes (like those inside rolls of paper towels), all stapled together. Here, I made thick cookie rings and baked them close together so they would fuse into a sturdy structure. I then...
Thanks to Julia M. Usher and some community members for their inquiries concerning the "interesting" surface texture on my gingerbread cookies made for Halloween, shown above. I've been testing various techniques for a while...
I've got another cookie platter! Why?! Just because I like to design them, especially when they can be customized to the season, holiday, or occasion! I also like stenciled effects...
I love the idea of stained glass cookies; the shine and transparency are so striking and delicate. I’m not too crazy about any of the mediums I’ve used for the effect, however. I tried...
Fall, autumn, autunno . . . whatever you call it, it's one of my favourite seasons. I designed this project at the end of August, so to get the feeling of autumn, I looked at some old pictures of my yard in Italy. I love the...
Halloween is my favorite cookie holiday. There are so many fun themes to use; I feel like I’ll never run out of Halloween ideas. Designs can go in a million different directions too...
Because I so much liked using the wet-on-wet technique to make the sunflower in my last tutorial, I decided to use the same technique to make a poppy this month. Poppies are wild; their stalks are irregular; and their petals are always messy. In other words, they're ideal...
My first child is packing for college as we speak. Her once overcrowded room is looking practically stark as more and more boxes accumulate in the hall. These visual reminders of her departure have me thinking excitedly about where this new journey will take her...
