May the 4th Be With You! - Decorated Cookie Set #4

Hello! 
I am back again! I thought the last set I just uploaded was a doozie pfffttt oh boy... this is a pretty large set and I created A LOT of Frankencookies and it was fun... and challenging... 
Let's start with my sketch.
I have started doing sketches of my ideas and it's working out pretty great as far as cookie decorating goes. Things go much easier when you have a plan. I have a color palatte and I know what cutters I'm going to use. It's also easier to improvise when things go wrong if you have mostly everything else planned out. 
Okay, okay, we're getting a bit long for the intro here let's get it going.

And here's where it all begins. The sketch. 
I do actually trace my cookie cutters so that I can create at the proper ratio and I can see what is possible. I wish I would have taken pictures of the cutters I used and I may update it later but at the moment I just want to pump this out so we'll walk through it real quick. 

Chewbacca= Gingerbread man but push his legs together and use a fork to create texture.
BB8= Circle cutters nothing fancy.
Boba Fett & Baby Yoda= I used a bell cutter for the heads (Baby Yoda I went back over with a circle the ears are the bell but reshaped a bit so they're more Baby Yoda-ish) and their bodies are actually a snowman turned upside down. What you see from their heads down is the snowmans hat and head upside down. (I hope you can kinda see it but as I said maybe I'll add pictures later. Let me know in the comments if I should add them.) 
R2D2= I used the bell cutter and cut the sides off and repurposed them as the "feet" for lack of better term.
The rest are what you see. Plaque, heart and plaque.
I never actually got around to coloring this set which is something I do now. 

And there they are!
Oh yeah I guess I didn't mention I did also use food coloring for Chewbacca. I considered just making a batch of chocolate but then decided against it. I do miss my chocolate cookies though and I'm ready to bring them back and also try out some chocolate chip but I digresssss....
Poor Yoda his little ears got a little crispy... I didn't fuss over it too much though because these were for my bestie and I knew she wasn't gonna fuss over a few crispy peices BUT in the future I plan to start focusing on getting my dough even so all my cookies bake evenly blah blah I know... just clarifying, I do have ideas for a solution to that in the future. 

Now. I know I've already been a pretty chatty Kathy but things are gonna get confusing if I don't preface this by saying I did end up making some changes along the way, which isn't unusal. I did also hit a small snag and we will go over that as well. 
Okay so here we go on with the process!

Yes yes yes I hear you. That picture is garbage, how dare you!? Yeah I know but it's all I've got so I'm running with it
Let's just keep it small shall we? This was at the end of the rodeo so yeah it's rough but it's real. The green looks funny because the food coloring has started separating from the icing but it's all good that's pretty normal. You just mix it back up before using it again. 
Okay so to date that was THE MOST colors I had ever used on a set of cookies and for those of you that don't know mixing colors is..... a pain. There's no way around it. It takes a lot of time. As a beginner it probably took me around 3 hours to get all my colors done. 

Speaking of green! I actually started with the green. It probably sat the longest because I was finished with it first so that's why it separated before the others. Here you can also see the difference between freshly piped icing and the icing up there on Baby Yoda that was mostly dry. The icing needs to be dry before adding anything else unless you are intending to do what is called "wet on wet" so the colors or designs do blend together. Most of my designs are layered and not wet on wet. 

Next I decided to start on the white. White always feels like a safe choice probably because I've used it so much already. It's a common base color. The icing was a bit thin you can kinda tell because the edges are a bit rough. I wasn't too pleased with that but I'm STILL learning.

Okay so far it's going okay... but things are about to get kinda weird. If you're a Boba Fett fan you're probably already a little upset... I didn't realize until I was finished that his costume was wrong. I know I know not a huge deal but I wasn't happy so that means...
DO OVER!
(and bonus reject cookies to eat later!)

Here we are as you can see I was pretty commited to making some fresh new Bobas. I ate the candy peice off the reject belt pretty quick lol but I really like how the new Boba came out. He was much more accurate. 

Check him out! Pretty cool if I do say so myself, and I do.

Okay so what's next? None of the other characters gave me any lip so I was back on track pretty quick but let's check in on the plaques and hearts first. 

Black is kind of tricky and I got tired of it realllllly fast. It takes forever to make a good dark black so I was happy with what I got. Again consistency was an issue. It should have been a tad thinner but... not bad. 
Okay so I apparently didn't get many photos of the plaques before writing on them and creating the light sabers which you saw up there. However, I did decide to change them. I found out the wedding colors were blue and red and decided to go that route and I am super glad I did. That left me with a special "reject" cookie for hubby since his favorite color is green. It's not necessarily his favorite light saber but the token wasn't lost.

I don't know what happened but a good deal of my pictures are... blurry. 
I'll work on that in the future. I can say it's pretty terrifying writing on a plain white cookie especially with black because if I have to remove it the mistake is going to be visible. I know a lot of cookiers/cookie artists use projectors and fonts but that's not something I'm currently interested in doing and it kind of takes away from the personalization of the art in my opinion. I can understand it for those who are doing mass numbers of cookies and selling them but this is just a hobby for me which is fun and also provides a much needed creative outlet. 
I don't plan on mass producing identical cookies. That's not the plan. 
Making delicious, adorable, creative pieces of cookie art is the plan. 

Ah yes the light sabers.
I am glad I decided to go blue and red instead of green and red. 
In retrospect I am wishing I would have created borders on more of my cookies and I will keep that in mind in the future. I have struggled with that decision on most of my sets, whether to create a border or not and I think I'm going to be adding borders to my cookies in the future. 

These cookies were sooo much fun!!! I was so happy with how they turned out except for the Chewbacca cookies I actually considered tossing them and starting over but my husband came in the kitchen and I'll be damned if he didn't come in and compliment the Chewbacca cookie. It was his favorite one. Unbelievable. So I kept him and he's kinda grown on me. I'm glad I did because my bestie really loved him too. That was also my first time playing with "watercolor" (mixture of food coloring and extract) to make his ammo holder sash thingy look a little rugged. 

Awwwww aren't they... awesome!?
They were even cuter bagged up!! 
I was sad to let these go I got pretty attached to them but I know my bestie and her husband really enjoyed them!! 
I would make more of these in the future they were fun and VERY colorful! 

Once again thank you for stopping by! 
I know it's not all super professional over here but I'm just sharing my gifts and experiences. Over time everything will improve and I hope you are you inspired to try something new!
Have an awesome day! 
Much love.
Amanda