A Study in Frustration

What doesn’t frustrate me?   I think the most frustrating is painting on Cookies.  I know shading at the edges never seems to work for me.  That’s why I took painting classes fr9m my precookiecon classes.

Well I most definitely could use classes! Lol I just kind of bumble along trying to learn from my mistakes.  Thankfully it's more fun than frustrating but it can also be heartbreaking. I seem to struggle the most with the fine detail work so I've ruined my fair share of cookies at the final moment.  Lol I won't even go into how bad my letter piping can be! *grin*

I understand.  I found the  biggest tool is faith and accepting what you have made.  Others don’t see the flaws, but the hard work.  Sometimes your mistakes make the best successes.

That's a good way to look at it! I find with most creative endeavors we are our own worst critics. Sometimes all I can see are the mistakes! Lol

My letter pipping is so bad...my penmanship is really terrible, so every cookie with words on it do not look good at all.

I do my lettering with my pico

A pico is on my to buy list along with about a million other things! lol I would love to go out and buy everything on my wish list but my budget says I have to pace myself. *grin* I've been looking at the KopyKake projector thing too but haven't decided if I should add it to my list or not. I'm thinking I might get more use out of an airbrush instead.

Kopykake is more expensive than a pico and doesn’t work as well.  I like both my airbrush and my pico.  I don’t know if I could choose.  I actually own 2 airbrushes.

Now if only there was a piece of equipment I could buy that would produce bead work without craters I'd be set. Mostly. lol I'd still have that whole circle issue. I've been trying out a new recipe today in an effort to prevent spreading. So far it has held it's shape really well but the texture is too soft I think. Who knew so much chemistry was involved in baking! lol

Spreading of the cookie or icing? If it’s cookie try chilling your cut dough.  If my butter gets too warm my cookies definitely spread.

For my cookie dough.  Yeah I wasn't chilling my dough before but I definitely see a difference when i do.  The new recipe turned out fairly well but I creamed my butter when it was too cold apparently. So I had a rough surface with bubbles.  They taste great though! Lol When I make my next batch I need to be more patient! *grin*

We had a recent Practice Bakes Perfect challenge about piping circles (https://cookieconnection.julia...challenge-27-circles), which you might find helpful. The challenge intro (previous link) gave some useful resources with tips for piping perfect circles. Also, if you search the Blog section of the site for that Challenge Recap, you'll see some of the results of that challenge where members discussed the methods they had the most success with. 

Regarding epic fails: we all have them. My best advice is to do what you're doing (seek advice, practice, and find those solutions that work best for you) and then find creative ways to hide those fails (or eat them)!

Thank you so much for the link! You have so much good info here on your site. I've been slowly but surely going through it. I just read through the info for this months challenge and learned something new.  I had no idea how that effect was achieved! Lol I might even be brave enough to try it... Providing i can get my recipe squared away!