Day 266 - Strawberry Cookie Cutter

9/23/2010

Okay, so I went to Mickey D's for a "Happy Meal" just to get a cookie cutter.

I had to go twice because I needed two of the little dolls to share with my grand girls. Cute, cute!

Day 232 - Cookie Cutters

8/20/2010

These fun boxes have a cookie cutter as part of the base.

They were made in England for Department 56 and are part of a series.

I only have these two, but they came in lots of other designs.

I'm not sure if there was anything inside the boxes or not.

Day 229 - "Blue Jeans" Cookie Cutter

8/17/2010

In the goody bag at the CCCC convention was this cute cutter, designed by our own local group, the Rocky Mountain Cut-Ups. The jeans cutter was packaged with a card telling the history of Levi jeans in an old pocket. It illustrated a part of California history because Levi's were invented there.

Day 201 - Kokopelli Beanie Baby

7/19/2010
This little Beanie Baby of Kokopelli sits on my piano with some of the rest of my instrument collection. I also have the cookie cutter of Kokopelli there.

Day 185 - Patriotic Cookie Cutters

7/4/2010

In honor of the Fourth of July my photo today is of the two cookie cutters which were included in the 2002 Betty Crocker USA Olympic Cookie Kit.

Day 182 - Copper Cookie Cutters

7/1/2010

One of the raffle prizes that I won at the convention was a bag with copper cutters from Frankencutters.

http://www.frankencutters.com/fc/

Day 179 - New Cookie Cutters

6/28/2010

Unpacking - some of the cookie cutters I received at the CCCC convention:

purchases; presents; door prize; goody bag; scramble, raffle and meeting favors.

I haven't counted them all yet.

Day 176 - Cookie Cutters

6/25/2010
At gatherings of cookie cutter collectors we like to have a scramble where people put their "extra" cutters out to sell or trade. This is a cute cookie cutter that I found at the scramble on Thursday evening at the Cookie Cutter Collector's Club convention.

Day 168 - Measuring Cup/ Cookie Cutters

6/17/2010
Collectors look forward to the "scramble" where others sell extras at our Cookie Cutter Collectors Club Convention. I found this cute set of measuring cups with cutters on the bottom at a past Cookie Cutter Convention.

Day 167 - Cookie Cutters

6/16/2010
Preparing for "show & tell" at the Cookie Cutter Convention next week. I found this cute set in Munich last year on my way to visit Becca in Albania.

Day 111 - Theodore Bear

4/21/2010

This is Theodore Bear, a cookie cutter made in 2002 for the 100th anniversary of the Teddy Bear. It was made by coppersmith, Michael Bonne for Holidays By Mail.

Copyright © 2002 Holidays By Mail, LLC

Day 80 - Cookie Stamps

3/21/2010

Some of the cookie stamps that I designed and made for the volunteer leaders at a group of Girl Scout Day Camps I worked for during the summer of 1986. Each camp had a different theme and thus a different design for the stamp.

To make the stamps I took some clay to make the design then I used a square plastic freezer box and filled it part way with wet plaster. I then put the piece of clay with the design in the plaster. After that dried I put something on the plaster so I could pour more wet plaster in the box to make the top of the mold. After removing the clay model you then have a plaster mold you can use. You have to leave a hole in the top so you can pour clay slip into the mold. This is just like the molds that you use to make any kind of ceramics. I used stoneware slip. After removing the greenware from the mold and cleaning it, I had them fired at the local recreation center. I still have all of the molds but haven't done anything like that for a long time.

Day 45 - Valentine Cookie Cutter

2/14/2010

Happy Valentine's Day

Cookie cutter from the new Williams Sonoma "Message in a Cookie Set"

Day 24 - Cookie Cutter

1/24/2010 My CCCC secret pal gave me this awesome cookie cutter for the 1st present this year. I have to wait till December before I find out who it is.

I have been working on cataloging my collection. It is a challenge to get a shot that shows the details of a cutter. For this shot I used a plain white background to get some shadows to bring out the parts.

Making cookies

I have a confession to make: I really am not very good at making cookies. Now, don't get me wrong, my cookies taste very good. I take cookies to most pot-luck dinners that I go to and get rave reviews. What I mean to say is that my cookies aren't beautiful like those made by my friends Shirley and Christine. Their cookies are works of art. Shirley has done demonstrations of cookie decorating for the national convention of the Cookie Cutter Collector's Club. If you have been to one of the CCCC conventions in the last decade, you have seen her cookies. Christine brought some airbrushed beauties to the Spring meeting of the Rocky Mountain Cut-ups last year. I almost didn't want to eat them. In fact there are many cookie artists in the Cookie Cutter Collector's Clubs. There is one collector that sells extra cutters on eBay who uses wonderful decorated cookies as a selling point for the cutters.
You would think that as a very active cookie cutter collector, I would be better at making cookies. The other day, I got home from work and decided to make some cookies for the Super Bowl pot-luck for those of us who were working on Sunday. So I found a football shaped cookie cutter (I have at least 3 or 4 in my collection) This one had the impression of the laces so I had to roll the sugar cookies out thicker than I usually do so that the impression would show. When I baked them they raised up from the baking powder and baked together so some of my footballs had sharp corners! I really didn't have time to decorate them with icing and I didn't have the right color of dusting sugar or sprinkles so I had slightly off shape plain sugar cookie footballs. I then decided to try to make some little spritz footballs. I mixed up a batch of my ginger spritz cookies and put the dough into the cookie press with the oval die. At first the dough was a little too soft so I added some flour to make it firmer (no, cooling the dough doesn't work with this recipe). Then the dough was a little too stiff. I've had this cookie press for over a decade and when I tried to press the dough out, the plastic screw part on the handle section cracked! I was heartbroken. I love that cookie press. It is a Wilton "Bite-Size" cookie press. I can make a batch of Spritz (butter) cookies using that press in one hour, start to finish, and I often do. Spritz cookies come out cute, no decorating needed. Sometime I use colored sugar or sprinkles to decorate them but they are pretty anyway, especially when I color the dough. The ring holding the die to the end of the press had cracked a few years ago and Kathy's husband fixed it by using a hose clamp. The "Bite Size" press is no longer available but I was lucky to find another one on eBay a while back so I do have a back-up. The oval die didn't work as well as some of the other shapes but the cookies looked like little footballs. Everyone thought the cookies were cute and tasted wonderful. It is just, for me, sometimes I wish I had the talent and patience to make the beautiful cookies that some of my friends make!

Cookie Cutter Collector's Club

This past few weeks have been about cookie cutters. I have been working on an index for a newsletter that ran for 21 years. I finally finished it, all 200 pages of it! Then I was asked to talk at The Brass Armadillo, a local antique mall. I talked about collecting cookie cutters. This past Sunday was the Fall Meeting for our local cookie cutter club. We had a great time. I know that it seems to be a strange collectable but we have a lot of fun and I have friends across the country. More on this later.

Photos from my talk at the Brass Armadillo.