Food as art

Do you have projects or project ideas sitting around waiting to be completed? Grand ideas waiting for you to give them life? Maybe you’ll get to them when you’re less busy/lazy/tired or the project gets easier/more fun/more interesting. You know, whatever the excuse de jour.

If this is you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I have a few of those projects. A few years ago, I made this sketch.

It is meant to be a large, 6-canvas art installation for my master bedroom. I had the best intentions of getting this done. Truly I did. I even bought the canvases! But then I got hung up on several things: choosing colors, having very little painting experience, not wanting to make a mess, and the large scale of the project.

What does this have to do with a baking blog? Well, last week I was looking around for inspiration for some leftover cookies I had sitting around. I was looking at scrapbook paper, at books, and basically just wandering around my house aimlessly... until I came across my sketch book. I saw it and immediately remembered my long lost sketch. I decided this was the perfect way to use up those cookies!

I had to make a few tweaks though. For one, my cookies were square, not rectangle, so I had to modify how much I could fit onto each cookie. Second, I already had icing mixed up in various shades of pink for another project so I decided to use that. I adore pink, we’re pretty much besties actually, but pink won’t be going on my walls.

Okay, with those disclaimers out of the way, here’s what I did:

First I piped on the light pink stripes. I let that sit for a while because I wanted good definition between my stripes.

When the light pink stripes were dry to the touch, I piped on my dark pink stripes.

There was a cookie casualty along the way... thankfully, I had extras:

Once I had all of my cookies fully covered, I let them dry overnight.

The next day, I just started piping on the design one “canvas” at a time.

Because the stripes were dry, it was easy to “erase” the parts I wasn’t happy with. I’m glad I let the bottom dry before trying to pipe on the design because I did a lot of “erasing.” Actually, you can still see some of my erase marks...

I liked this project. It’s fun and rewarding to bring life to your ideas – even if it’s not in the same way you’d imagined.

I am once again feeling motivated to get this project done! You know, once I find a place to make the mess, repaint the bedroom, choose painting colors based on our new master bedroom colors... Okay, who am I kidding, it’s going to be a while before this project is revisited. But at least I can feel good that my sketch was made into “art” at least once!

What are some projects you’ve been meaning to complete?