Just as before, we wanted to just come up with a basic shape to use as a canvas, and let the creativity flow from there. Also, people have loved the frame cutters for message cookies! So once again, here are a couple of new shapes to allow you to write just about anything you want – or just decorate them up for whatever occasion you’re decorating for.

So here are just a few ideas I came up with (And, ok— Mike helped!) Can I just point out that the Summers family wasn’t really established in 2000? My head said “1996″ and my hand said “2000″.  By the time my hand caught up with my brain, it was too late. Does that ever happen to you?  But anyway, I digress. I”m so excited to get these cutters out there and see what you uber-creative geniuses come up with!

These cutters are now available on Karen’s Cookies if you’d like to try them out! Click here to see them. We have the Plaque in large and small, and the Scalloped Oval in large and small. To save you some money on them we’ve got a 15% off coupon for you as well! Just type in may2013 in the coupon code box on the shopping cart page and the coupon will be applied.

Ok, so let’s give a few of these away shall we?

Reply to this post by the end of the weekend (By end of day Sunday, May 12th) and we’ll randomly draw 5 of you to win a complete set of these four new cutters (Plaque in two sizes, and the Scalloped Oval in two sizes).

Since it’s Mother’s Day weekend, go ahead and tell me what you love about your mom. I’ll go first– My mom is my number one fan. She has always encouraged me to grow my talents and go after my dreams, (even if they’re a little looney), and she always tells me how proud she is of me even if I don’t deserve it. Thank you, Mom. I love you!

Good Luck!

We had a few left-overs from our goody bag assembly, so we’re going to give away some bundles of goodies to those who weren’t able to attend this year. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First let’s talk about what was in the bags!

Mandy Wallington from Kool Cookie Cutters came all the way from Perth, Australia to attend CookieCon , and she brought with her gum leaf cookie cutters, handmade in Australia!  So awesome!

Julia M. Usher came and demonstrated how to use stencils, (among other awesome things! Thank you Julia!!). Designer Stencils is THE place for culinary stencils, and they donated a stencil to every attendee. This one can be used for brush embroidery. So cool!

Along with the donation of one of their awesome projectors as a grand prize, Kopykake donated a gift pack of frosting sheet decals to everyone. We had fun playing with them during open decorating.

American Tradition Cookie Cutters sent cookie cutters for everyone! They are such a great company and have a fun selection of high-quality cutters. Check them out!

Patrick from Plastics in Print sent a cutter for everyone. Their custom cutters are very reasonably priced and they also have some really fun stock shapes.

Fondarific sent a sample of their delicious fondant for everyone to try. Did you know they have fondant in lots of fun flavors? Buttercream, mocha, grape, peppermint…. just to name a few. It is great fondant!

Fancy Flours sent some really fun wafer paper sheets for everyone. The attendees got to play around with them during the open decorating session, and it was so much fun to watch what they did with the wafer paper. Very fun! Have you tried wafer paper yet?

Kip and Connie from BRP Box Shop came and participated in CookieCon. They were such a fun addition, and we were so happy to have them there! In addition to donating an awesome grand prize (A BRP- Branded BIKE!), and a Half-as-Grand second prize (a BRP-Branded UNICYCLE!), they also gave generous gift packs of their boxes and bags.  Look what was in there!

Amazing, right? If you haven’t checked out BRP Box Shop yet, do yourself a favor and head right over there. They are a great company with the prettiest boxes available. They also debuted a limited-edition Ornament Box and gave one to everybody. Go check those out before they’re gone!

Americolor Corp (THE place for the best food coloring out there) donated a bottle of their awesome Soft Gel Paste coloring to everyone.

This one blew everybody’s mind. Nielsen-Massey Vanilla sent a 2-oz bottle of their Madagascar  Bourbon Vanilla to everyone! Such a fun surprise and generous addition to the goody bags.

In addition to a grand prize of a $150 gift certificate, Country Kitchen Sweet Art donated a fondant impression mat to everyone. The attendees had lots of fun playing with fondant and impression mats during Open Decorating.

Sylvia from Foose Cookie Cutters donated so many fun goodies! In addition to an awesome gift basket loaded with cutters, she also donated more than 20 gift sets of cutters to be given away, and a set of adorable mini cutters, note pad, and coupon for the goody bags.

Karen’s Cookies (that’s me!) donated a little gift pack of fun stuff to each attendee. Here’s what was in it:

We included both of Pam (Cookie Crazie)’s new exclusive cutters– the Homespun Christmas Tree and the Cupcake that we are selling through our site. We also included a PME tip, a disco dust, a pixie dust shaker, and a boo-boo stick.

I don’t have a picture of the next one because we used all of them in the goody bags. Kee-Seal donated two of their disposable decorating bags to each attendee, along with some gift packs of their bags to be given as prizes. They are great bags! Definitely check them out.

So that was what was in the bags! Although this post is dedicated to the gift bag items, I want to also mention the other awesome sponsors we had. They were just as generous, and donated prizes that were not in the gift bags:

The Cookie Cutter Company

The Cookie Thing

Spices, Etc.

Copper Gifts

Julia M Usher

Sweet Cherry Gift Shop

A huge thank you to all of the generous sponsors of CookieCon! You helped make it an awesome and memorable event for all those who were in attendance.

Now for those of you who weren’t able to attend, we have a chance for you to win some of this fun stuff! We don’t have complete goody bags left. We just had a few extras of some of the items. So what we are doing is giving away “bundles”– kind of like a grab-bag. Comment on this post and we will randomly choose 8 of you (through Random.org) and send you a fun bundle of  goodies. Please comment by Wednesday, November 21 at midnight (wherever you are!). International entries are welcome. I will try to get the winners announced on Thanksgiving, but I might be too sleepy from all the carbs…. so I reserve the right to announce the winners on Friday.

We’d love to offer these prizes to people who didn’t already get this stuff from CookieCon.  So to be eligible, please indicate that you didn’t make it to CookieCon this year.  And you can also feel free to wish Mike’s mom, Lorene, a happy birthday! Have a great week!

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/88915337@N04/8103998939/in/photostream/
Congrats on the $100 Gift Certificate Tatyana!  I’ve already decided that we’ll be having another contest in the future.  We should be getting in a new (and much larger) batch of these cutters in within the next few days!

Thanks so much to all who entered!

So we are VERY interested to see what you all are doing with them.  What fun designs are you coming up with?

What better way to find out, than with another give-away?

So if you are a blogger, face-booker, or flickr-(um) “flickr-er”? or whatever, you have a chance to win yourself a $100 gift certificate to Karen’s Cookies!  So between now and October 20th (2012) decorate some cookies using our new Frame Cookie Cutters (use any or all of the 2 designs and 2 sizes) and post your decorated cookies!  We don’t care if it’s a blog, facebook, flickr, or anything else, as long as you can provide a link where people can click over to see your work.  Also, provide a link on your post to these cutters.  (This URL will allow them to see them all:   http://www.karenscookies.net/Karens-Cookies-Exclusives_c_112.html  )

After you’ve posted, simply leave a comment on THIS blog post with a link to your pictures.  Please make sure your link goes directly to the picture(s) you are entering, rather than the home page to your blog, facebook, flickr, etc).  After the deadline (Oct. 20th) we will randomly select one of the links to win the $100 Gift Certificate.  (Everyone who posts a link to their cookies has an equal chance!)

If you’re trying to promote your blog or web site, this is also a great chance to get people clicking over to you as well.

So there you go.  We can’t wait to see what people come up with!

UPDATE:

These cutters sold out faster than we could have possibly imagined.  They have beat any other product we’ve ever introduced into our store.  We re-ordered them immediately after realizing how fast they were going.  If anyone would like to enter this contest, please email us through the karenscookies.net web site and request a template.  If you don’t mind printing that out and cutting out your cookies you’re more than welcome to enter that way!

Karen

Please fast-forward 5 months.

Guess what we have? (finally)

Fancy Frame cutters!!

Yay! We have two sizes of squares, and two sizes of rectangles.

Large rectangle.

Small rectangle.

Big square.

Little square.

There are seriously ENDLESS ways you could decorate these. I did just a few examples to get your creative juices flowing.

Are you seeing some potential?

I left most of them blank so you could imagine different things written on them.

Oh, and because I ruin them when I write on them.

But imagine what YOU could write. Maybe a wedding monogram?

Or a regular old everyday monogram?

Or a big THANK YOU for being awesome.

You need these. Comment below for a chance to win one of 10 (TEN!) sets of our four new cutters. Please include your name and email address (use the email address box in the comment form so it’s hidden. Otherwise all kinds of crazies might email you) so we can contact you if you win.  Please comment by Friday, September 28 by 7pm Pacific time. I will use random.org to pick 10 winners. International entries are accepted.

For those of you who want to place an order, we have a coupon for 15% off your entire order– including sale prices! Use the coupon code happyfall15.

Thanks for reading! Sorry I’ve had a long absence (again). I appreciate you still checking in!

Narrowing down the ideas was the hardest part. I have endless ideas, but I could only start out with a few, so I painstakingly narrowed it down to three. I’ve always thought there needed to be a cute baby cutter out there. Not just a baby head, not a crawling baby, not just a baby onesie, but an actual baby wearing the onesie (or whatever…). So my first design is….. (drum roll please!)

A baby! I wanted him/her to be easy to decorate, simple, but customizable. Here’s how I decorated it.

I wanted to be able to do some easy cute toes and NO HANDS. I’m not a fan of drawing hands. This is a super simple design.

You can add some clothes.

Awww, poor baby! What’s the matter? (Mike drew this one for me, and I translated it to cookie)

There, that’s better. Jammies and a binky and all is well in the world.

The second design is one that I’ve wanted for a long time. Wilton used to have a pretty decent one, but it was discontinued a while back, and it just seemed like there was a need for a plain old girl. Not a gingerbread girl, but a GIRL that you could decorate all different ways. So my second cutter is….

A girl! And along the same lines, my third cutter is….

A boy! I had basically the same requirements for the boy and the girl. I wanted them to be very customizable, and like the baby, I didn’t want to have to do hands. Also, I wanted to be able to have them hold things like soccer balls and bouquets. So here’s what you can do with these guys:

These guys are obviously soccer kids, but you could do any sport. Basketball would be very similar. Mike helped me figure out how to do hands without having to do hands. You make them hold something and just put some round circles for fingers. Easy! So it’s not a Rembrandt, but it’ll do for a cookie.

Football, ballet, Karate. Notice how you can just tuck their hands behind them if you don’t want them to hold anything?

Luau! I would just like to point out that that hula girl is a self portrait. ha ha!

And finally (for now!) a bride and groom. I’m going to work on more designs and do some decorating tutorials for these guys, but this will have to do for now. Oh, and sorry about the lack of cultural diversity in these kids. I was decorating late and was lazy so I used all the same color. Next time I’ll be more culturally diverse.

So do you want some of my new cutters?

I’m going to give away a set of all three to 10 lucky blog commenters. Just post a comment (maybe you could tell me what you would like me to do for my next batch of cutters!), and I’ll choose 10 at random using random.org and send you the cutters. Contest ends at midnight Friday, April 6, and I will announce the winners on April 7 (because that’s my Mom’s birthday).   OH– and if you are going to Spring Fling, you will be receiving a set there. You can still comment on the blog post, but please make a note that you will be at Spring Fling so that I can choose another winner. Good luck! And thanks for putting up with my long absence!

I told you I’d show you really quickly how I pieced together my Indians. It’s super easy, and even easier if you have a plain tombstone cookie cutter, which I didn’t have. I need to get one of those…

But since I don’t have one, I used these three sets of cutters:

The rectangle set, oval set, and the medium aspic cutter set. I have recently seen the light about the awesome versatility of the basic cutter shapes. Sometimes there just isn’t the “perfect” cutter shape, and you have to do a little doctoring.

So for for each pair of Indians, I cut one oval, one rectangle, and two teardrops.

Cut the oval and the rectangle in half.

Cut a little bit from the teardrop using the oval cutter.

Then put all your pieces together like a puzzle.

Then bake and decorate. I didn’t do a step-by-step tutorial on the decorating, but it was similar to the pilgrims. I used a 1 1/2″ circle cutter as a template for their heads, then drew on the hair, neck, shoulders and feather. I did the faces just like I did on the pilgrims.

I left the feather off of the girl, so if you have a plain tombstone cutter, she would be easy as can be. You could always add more than one feather too. Be creative.

I’ve showed you recently the fun things that you can do with plain rectangles and ovals. And I’m working on a top-secret project right now that I’ll post after Christmas that shows even more versatility with one of the basic shapes (can you guess which one?). It’s turning out to be lots of fun! So stay tuned for that…

But in the meantime, you need your own super-duper set of basic shapes. Comment on this post, and one lucky winner (chosen at random) will get the aspic cutters:

and the rectangle cutters:

And the oval cutters:

And the nylon circle cutters:

and the triangle cutters:

And the hexagon cutters:

and the square cutters:

And the blossom cutters:

AND a cool set of heart cutters that I don’t have a picture of because they’re not even in my store yet. But you’ll like them.

That’s a lot of cookie cutters!

Just comment on this post by Friday, November 18 at midnight (wherever you are!), and I’ll choose one winner using Random.org to win all 9 sets of cutters. Please enter only once. Good luck!

But hey, let’s not look back. Let’s look forward! I have some Halloween ovals to show you! I really should have shown you the ovals first and then ended with the rectangles, because I really liked the rectangles better, which sorta makes this anti-climatic, but such is life.

So we have a set of oval cookie cutters.

Half are plain-edge, and half are crimped edge. I used the plain edge for these cookies.

First are some Halloween treat buckets.

Had a little bleeding on the handle on the one on the left, because I was lacking patience. If you don’t want bleeding, you must wait. Don’t put a dark color on a wet lighter color. Wait. Patience! (Yoda voice)

Next, some plain pumpkins.

These are easy. Just draw an oval in the center that is about three-quarters of the height of the pumpkin. Then add ridges heading outward and slightly upward. Does that make sense? Then add a stem and maybe a leaf. You can have pumpkins in all kinds of sizes. Who needs pumpkin cookie cutters?

Next, I tried just a bunch of candy.

It looks too stark to me. Maybe more candy?

Remember in my rectangle post, I made some monster faces? Frankenstein, Mummy, Dracula, and a Skull and Crossbones. Here are their oval counterparts:

Here are the rectangles and ovals together, just for comparison’s sake.

Definitely like the rectangles better, but the ovals are cute in their own way.

These next guys were my favorite, and they were also the most simple. I wanted something really easy for the smallest ovals, so I decided on spiders.

I loved doing them. They took about 10 seconds and added a lot to the plate of cookies.

And my other favorites were equally easy. Candy corn!

What? You say these aren’t ovals? Well, you would be right. But all I did was cut a sliver off of each side of the oval (at an angle) to make cone shapes. I loved that it worked, because now I can make any size of candy corn. The smallest were almost the same size as real candy corn. Cute.

Here’s a platter of the ovals:

Fun stuff.

I have a handful of sets of oval cookie cutters to give away. I’m probably not going to get them to the winners by Halloween, but the good news is that the uses for oval cutters is ENDLESS.  You can use them all year long, and then when next Halloween gets here (in the approximately 2 seconds that will take), you’ll have them to make all the pumpkins, candy corns, spiders, or monster faces you want.

Comment on this post by Wednesday, October 26, midnight, and you’ll be entered to win a set of your own. I’ll choose 5 winners using Random.org. Please enter only once.

Thanks for reading! Good luck this week getting all of your Halloween preparations together. I have 4 little costumes to figure out this week. Do you have a lot to do before Halloween?

So I’m trying to learn. And after meeting Callye last week, and learning some of her methods for thinking outside the box, I came home totally stoked to try some new things.

I love the rectangle set of cookie cutters.

I actually resisted liking them for quite some time. Because really, you can do without them in a pinch. You can use a ruler and a pizza cutter and get all the rectangles you could ever want. But once I bought this Fox Run Set, I wondered why it took me so long to get them! They have come in handy for so many things, and are so infinitely easier to use than a ruler and pizza cutter.

I have been wanting to feature them for a while, but didn’t really know what to do with them.

Well, I came home from Cookie Camp all fired up to be creative. I knew I wanted more Halloween cookies on the blog. I knew I wanted to feature the rectangle set. So I decided to think outside the box by thinking inside the box. Get it? Inside? The box… because it’s a rectangle….

Yeah.

So the first cookies I came up with were these guys:

I’m quite sure Frankenstein has been done on a rectangle before, since his head is a giant rectangle and all. But I was proud of myself for thinking of the other ones!

Then I thought just some spider webs would be cute and simple.

Easy, simple.  Anyone can do it. Outline, flood, let dry, then add a spider web and spider. Easy peasy.

Then I got crazy ambitious. I had just seen the most adorable cookie done by Haniela, that was just a silhouette of a child blowing a dandelion. And then I saw a Halloween card that had the silhouettes of trick-or-treaters. I figured it was a sign, so I tried it.

I think it has potential! It isn’t perfect, but it’s kind of a cool effect. I want to try it again soon.

So then I got off my ambitious kick and went back to simple and less creative.

I don’t have a Kopycake (obviously! Ha ha), and I really didn’t feel like spending a ton of time getting the font just right, so I didn’t. I just looked at a picture of fun-size Hershey bars online and went for it. These are pretty small– about the actual size of a fun-size candy bar. So I kept them super simple. Although it doesn’t look too impressive up close like this, when they were mixed into a platter of cookies, it totally worked. I’ll show you that in a minute.

The next two were thoughts along the same lines. I wanted a haunted house, but a rectangle is kind of limiting. So first I did another silhouette-type design:

And then I got an idea. How about just a haunted door?

Does it work? I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ll do it again, but it was worth a shot.

I recently got to see a Cookie Artisan (Maryann) platter of cookies in real life. They were amazing. I loved her sign, and so I got the idea to do a scary “KEEP OUT!” sign.

I tried to make the lettering look rough and scary. I piped it on and then scraped at the edges a little with my boo-boo stick. I think next time I could do it better. But not bad for a first shot.

This next one is a simple idea that wasn’t executed as well as I’d hoped, but again, it has potential. I think that’s what I’m learning about “thinking outside the box”– sometimes you have to try it a few times to make it work, but you know if you’re on the right track.

Next time I’ll do the background a different color. But it’s cute in its own way.

I really liked this next one. It was fun to do, super simple, and it turned out cute.

I know what you’re thinking. That this isn’t a true rectangle. Which is true. But all I did was trim the tiniest bits of the top left and bottom right corners off before baking so that the bag would have some dimension. Easy easy easy.

I thought it needed some depth, so I painted on some charcoal black petal dust in the corners where the bag would be folding inward.

Here’s how it looked afterward:

Just like the fun size candy bars earlier, I went super simple with the candy in the bag. You just want the overall look to be there.

So those are my thinking outside-yet-inside-the-box cookies.

And I tried some Glorious Treats tricks for photographing my cookies. You know, like actually putting them on a plate and stuff. I hope she’ll be proud of my attempts at taking some prettier photos.

Here’s one:

And another:

Look Glory! Props! I’ll get the hang of this yet.

I came away from this little exercise realizing the the possibilities for the Rectangle Set of cookie cutters is seriously endless. What would YOU do with them?

Comment on this post by Thursday October 13th at midnight (wherever you are!) and I’ll enter you to win a set all your own. Please enter only once. I’ll choose THREE winners using Random.org.

Another fun (similar, yet different) project coming up soon!

Fast forward two weeks. I’m finally getting this post up, and I have to point it out to you. Goodbye Summer… Hello Kitty. Get it? Cute, right?  Sigh. My life is full of good intentions.

But hey– Wilton has a new set of Hello Kitty cookie cutters! I was SO excited to get these, because we used to get asked ALL THE TIME about Hello Kitty cookie cutters, and there just weren’t any available. Till now.

We had 48 of them in our first order and they were gone in no time. But we have more now.

These were fun. It was like playing with paper dolls, choosing different outfits for Kitty to wear.  And they were simple and easy, too, which is always a plus! If you do a quick google image search for “Hello Kitty”, you’ll find all kinds of cute outfit ideas. I liked substituting flowers for the bow, too. Fun.

Does someone you know love Hello Kitty?

You should make them some cookies!

Comment on this post and I’ll choose 5 at random (using random.org) to win a set of Hello Kitty cutters.

Contest closes Sunday, Sept. 25 at midnight (wherever you are!). Please only enter one time. Good luck!