Episode 39: Airbrushing Tutorial [Tips, Tricks & Techniques For The Perfect Airbrushed Cookie]

hey basic bakers welcome back to the cookie chat i am chelsea with rolling in the joe az and i am flying solo today because our episode is all about airbrushing airbrushing tends to be one of those skills within the baking community that can be highly intimidating but don't let that scare you just like anything else that you have learned this thus far would be you have to take your time to master it to learn and to adapt as you go airbrushing is no exception to that i myself do not claim to be a master and expert on airbrushing but these are just some things that i picked up over the past six years that have helped me while i execute some designs with my trusty airbrush machine speaking of machines i am using the cookie countess airbrush machine it is the same exact one i purchased six years ago it has been my writer dye og i will also be using the cookie count as airbrush coloring now if you have something different that is completely fine melissa and i always love to tell you guys to make your dollar work for you and your business there's no need to rush out and purchase the exact items i have what you have on hand should work just fine if you have not pulled the trigger and invested in any airbrush color that's okay too you can always take your gel colors dilute it down with a little bit of water make sure it's thin enough though that it's really going to come through your airbrush gun and not get all clogged up that's another way that you can have a workaround or if there's a specific color that you really want to use try that little technique in today's tutorial we're going to hit on a few different airbrushing skills first off we're going to learn some shading just some little ombre effects ways that you can bring some life to maybe just a plain colored cookie we are then going to move to stencils and also using a stencil and adding some luster dust or glitter to it and it's just really going to elevate that design up a notch last the dreaded we have to airbrush with black i'm gonna go ahead and share some tips with you guys on how i try and best airbrush with black it's always a scary one are the lines gonna come out chris you gotta pay attention let's wait and see um where this takes us but with that being said enough of my rambling but i do want to throw in one more thing make sure that you like subscribe and ring the notification bell so you can be notified over here when we launch new videos like this with that being said let's dive into the tutorial welcome back we're going to go ahead and get started first off with talking about the airbrush machine like i said earlier this is a cookie countess airbrushing machine it's the first one i purchased six years ago still my rider died oh gee it's never let me down i do not have experience with other airbrush machines so i cannot help troubleshoot on each individual one however i'm sure there's a lot of similarities between each of the brands also if you do have a favorite airbrush machine comment below and tell us what your favorite machine is and let's see which one wins all right getting started with our machine getting used to it so when we take this out of the box this is going to be our power source so it's what plugs into the wall plugs in underneath right here we're gonna have our compressor this little bad boy is our gun we have our air hose which is the white and then we also have our little control right here this controls the psi the pressure for the air or the air pressure that's going to come out and then our power button all right pretty simple here so with the cookie countess they use something called a single action gun so what a single action gun means is i'm gonna turn this on and you're gonna be able to hear it okay the air is coming out but there's no color coming there will not be any color until i pull back on this trigger i have some color in here to show you guys so the little trigger right here is going to determine when the color comes out what this trigger controls is a needle that's inside this well i take off the front part of this gun don't want to lose that piece we can see this little needle it is sharp but when i pull back it comes in and that is what is letting the color then come out the tip of the gun so if i barely pull back a little bit it's only going to allow a little bit of color if i fully engage the trigger it's going to allow more color to come out so that's what this is controlling and it's inside this wall so i'm going to get my tip put back on and keep going from there all right the other type of guns that there are are dual action guns and the dual action guns mean that you have to push down on the trigger and pull back for the color to release again that's a single action it only requires the pull of the trigger now that we have gone over the basics on the machine i want to go over a few other things with you guys i have my airbrush machine in my cookie room so with it being in here on my desk i put a paper towel underneath because this color well right here when putting my airbrush gun in and out can sometimes leak a little bit of color so if it leaks out the back of this machine i always keep a paper towel underneath i didn't change it out specifically to show you guys that it does transfer color at times that's something i do to help keep my counter protected another thing when airbrushing that i do is a little hack i use one of my lids for my half pan sheets and this is what i airbrush in i have a white countertop in my cookie room and i only airbrush in here so that way any overspray any color leakage is all right here i can just take this to the kitchen and i can clean one thing another trick because i hear all the time people saying i can't airbrush because i'm going back and forth between the kitchen to rinse things out it's just so much of a nuisance to me here's a little trick guys these plastic measuring cups from the dollar store they're gonna be your best friend so i have one empty one and i have one of these spilled with warm water warm to hot i like to start it hot because it's gonna cool off as i go but what i do in my cookie room in between airbrushing is i hold my gun over the empty container with the hot water i pour it into the well and tip the gun sideways pull back on the trigger and i spray until it comes out clear sometimes depending on the color it can take one or two rinses you can always shoot your hand until you see it coming clear and there we go that way i am not running back and forth back and forth i can just go dump this out and i can refill this one with hot water as many times as i need something else i love when airbrushing is my little stencil genie i know there's so many things now out here in the market the screens the little magnets like this that you can clip onto the sides of your stencils and stack them for however high you need depending on how thick your cookie is whatever works for you is going to be best again everyone's thickness of their cookies really vary nowadays so one product might not work for everybody it's really trying to find out what works best for you for me is the stencil genie so the stencil genie if i it's just magnetic and clips together you can see that there's a thinner section and a thicker section so you put them together that's going to be dependent on how thick your cookie is which i'll go ahead and show you when it lays flat you can just go ahead and flip either way for this tutorial i am going to be working with mainly the cookie countess airbrush coloring i do love this airbrush brand personally i also do have the tried and true of the americolors they're just smaller bottles these ones i use more for like a specialty color if i use it a lot other than that i really do like how much i get in here and i don't feel that they the um cookie countess ones are as liquidy some brands i've used are super thin and just leave so much like pixelated coloring i don't know it's personal preference not one brand is better than the other or any of that it's just again all comes down to what you like the look you're trying to go for um i also find that these are a little bit more affordable and again like i said they last longer for the price if you need a color that you do not have an airbrush you can always take your gel colors and add a little bit of water to it in your gun and like dilute it down and airbrush with that melissa and i are always about using what you have getting through that and making your dollars business owner work for you so do not feel like you need to rush out and buy airbrush color i know some cookie artists who have never purchased an airbrush color and only use their gel colors with gel colors also it is a way for you to match the cookie so if you're just looking for a little bit of a highlight on your cookie we're gonna go ahead and get started i always recommend wearing gloves anytime you are working with cookies touching your customers products also when you're airbrushing because airbrush can stain your hands we've all seen the million times that cookier say you know you're cookier you know your cookie when you have airbrushed hands so first things first we're just gonna go ahead and play with the machine and get used to our trigger our pressure all of that so i'm gonna put some pink in to the color holder just a few drops in there i don't fill mine to the top because when i tilt my gun to work i don't want the color splashing over the edge my goal in all of this is to make the least amount of messes i can but second i don't want to waste my product i'd rather add than i have to dispose of all right let's get started here so on my machine right here i can control the pressure obviously if i turn it all the way down no pressure if i crank it all the way up it's going to be the most pressure so that's going to be something that you're going to want to find where your sweet spot is also again like we talked about when you pull back this trigger small hand problems extra material if you pull it back ever so slightly you're going to get only minimal amount the more you pull it all the way back the more saturated the color is going to be so what do i mean let's see if i can zoom in here all right let's try this so i have my color all the way up right now or my pressure i'm sorry all the way up on the machine i'm just going to take a paper towel and this is how i recommend if you have never airbrushed if you've never airbrushed before just mess around on a paper towel all you're trying to get used to is the pressure feel and what you like so i'm just going to barely pull it back and we can see some color coming out on the paper hopefully that is in frame let me zoom in a little bit more all right and again i'm barely pulling back on that trigger but i'm also far away if i come closer to the paper and pull i'm going to get a deeper color so the further away you are from the object just a slight mist you're gonna have the closer you hold your gun the darker the color is gonna be so those are both the same pressure but just the proximity to the paper towel one of the big thing was people saying that they were getting like a pixelated look when they do airbrush um what i'm going to do is on the pressure i'm going to turn it all the way down and i'm going to show you guys you can hear the difference in the pressure listen that's more air pressure that's a little bigger pressure so a little bit of air pressure and a little bit of the pull of the trigger do you guys see that you gotta tell me you can see that look how that looks i'm same distance away if i get closer look at that see how like just pixelated it is versus that if you're getting that and you have a pressure control increase your pressure i like to work at almost high pressure on mine because all i'm doing then is pulling back the trigger zoom out on here there we go i'm just pulling back the trigger and i get a much softer blend versus again if i turned mine down and did the same thing it's like swatchy should probably do them right next to each other hopefully you guys are getting the gist of this and then turn it up look how smooth that is if i go closer and really pull back see how dark that is so it's really getting that feel for how much of your trigger to pull very rarely do i ever ever ever ever just pull all the way back because that is so much at one time that's where you can get like the drippage and leaking it looks like water the thing with airbrush is it's buildable really similar to like what melissa talked about in the water coloring tutorials that we have if you have not seen that go ahead and check out our video from two weeks ago and also does an entire water coloring tutorial for you guys how amazing is she everything is buildable and airbrush is no exception to that again take your time play with your paper towels you can also blend colors on here so if you want to see how things look before putting it on a cookie test it on a paper towel they are your best friends let's get started with our first tutorial i'm going to show you guys a few different ways on airbrushing how you can make it work for you so since i already have some peek in the gun i am going to bring over the start of a little floral cookie so i have my florets piped it's dried and i just want to enhance this a little bit i love this technique when it comes to the hibiscus flowers which are really coming back into theme with summertime anytime before i airbrush onto my cookie i always test the color on the side of my paper towel so again i have my lid i have my paper towel in here i'm just going to go ahead and highlight the center of the cookie so i'm just slowly pulling the trigger back and rotating in circular motion so if you can see on there it's just enough of a hint i could leave it like this before i piped my center onto my cookie like i put a little middle and it would just be a little something extra or i can keep building the color and making it more vibrant another little tip for florals is i already started right here but you can see just the tips of the florals are hit with the airbrush machine again same thing i'm just slightly pulling back on the trigger i'm holding the cookie and i'm just laying a little bit of airflow and moving the cookie around you come underneath then get the little ruffles it just enhances the cookie a little bit i really wanted to darken it i could pull back a little bit heavier on the gun and the little trigger and i can really make the leaves tips pop and if i move the cookie further and pull back i could give it a little ombre airbrush so those are two little tips on just one way that you can use your brush machine moving on to another little tidbit um is i'm just gonna take this yellow cookie let's pretend it's a lemon all right so on the lemon i like using my airbrush very similar to like i just showed you on the flowers just a highlight so i'm going to take plain yellow cookie again i filled my color well up with some yellow you can see it's on my gloves this is why i wear gloves turning my gun on i have not adjusted the air pressure at all again it's all going to be in the trigger work spraying a little bit just to make sure that it's coming out evenly and it's not spitting i am just going to holding my gun a good hand esque away from my cookie and it's slightly pulling back on the trigger i'm just going to come around and slightly hit the edge of my cookie you can see that it's spring because there's now a yellow hue around it i'm going to bring my gun a little bit closer now but again not pulling back very strong on the trigger and you can hear the clicks it's me releasing like i just want a little whisk think of just like you're putting some makeup on your cookie contouring the cookie i'm just going around the edge and i just added a little bit of dimension and character to my cookie so there we go so if i were to put something on this cookie it would just bring again a little bit of life to the edge of my cookie now what we're going to do is work with a stencil on our first little cookie so i'm going to use a honeycomb stencil because i still have some yellow in the machine i don't want to waste my coloring so i have my flooded cookie again when using airbrush you want to make sure that your top layer is crusted over like i can add some pressure to this cookie and it's not doing anything because with the stencil genie or your folder and your stencil it is going to add a little bit of pressure to the top of your cookie you do not want to pull your stencil up and all of a sudden it's pulling part of your icing that's something we do not want that so for my stencil genie i'm going to pull it apart i'm going to put my honeycomb stencil in and that's what it does it just clicks into place you can adjust it because sometimes the when it clips into place it can move so you can always adjust it all right so how we talked about earlier with the edges being two different shapes this is where you're gonna find what fits on your cookie so you want the tightest fit so if i place it on mine right now with the small side down that's a good fit this one also works pretty nicely so on this cookie either one i'm sure we're gonna have one that i'll show you that it's like this one uh it's a little bit wobblier i don't even love that that's gonna be a word right so this one i can press down and it gives me the tightest i want to make sure my stencil is as tight to my cookie as i can if it's just loosely sitting on there like i was to use this stencil and not put it in a clamp do you see how it's kind of bending around and i can do that and kind of spread it apart it's going to allow the airbrush to steep underneath so we want a nice seal on that cookie i am also going to go ahead and grab some of my uh luster dust because i'm going to show you guys how you can airbrush with a stencil and then use glitter i get asked that so many times from beginners with airbrushing is how did i get glitter incorporated into my design so do not be intimidated with the stencil just like i said practice on your um paper towel if you need to this is all going to be trial and error so you can use like extra cookies you can actually flood both sides of these and just work on stenciling the machine on here we go i'm going to start by doing a light coat with this design on the honeycombs you can kind of choose i always tend to go sideways with designs you don't want to just be like encode it do you love the sound effects doing that it's just gonna saturate your cookie so again think it's buildable it's like our makeup our foundations we want to start and add to so i'm going to start test here we go and i'm going to slowly fill in a little bit of the top come down to the next layer and you can hear it again i'm letting my gun go okay next layer when i get to the end i'm letting up on my trigger and then on the bottom if you wanted just a little light mist on this you could totally leave this as is i'm going to darken it up so as i'm talking to you i'm allowing this airbrush to settle with my gun being the single action gun and again air still coming out with no color because i'm not pulling the trigger you can take this and kind of dry your cookie i'm going to do the same thing now i'm going to build on to the next layer okay i'm happy with that color i'm going to show you this because i want you to see what it looks like before the glitter and then we're going to pray we can get it into place again so when you lift this up you don't want to drag it or wiggle it you want to lift it straight up so then that way if there's any excess liquid from the airbrush on your stencil it's not whipping onto your cookie so lifting it straight up here is the design if i wanted to um some extra icing on here if i wanted to like clean up the cookie or finish it off because it's just what i like to do you could go ahead and spare around the edges i'm going to try and get this lined back up ooh that actually works pretty well and i'm going to show you how now i can make it with some glitter so this you kind of have to move fast so i'm going to go back i'm going to add a quick layer see how i accidentally sprayed too much there you can kind of already see it pulling i'm just going to spray my dust onto the cookie and lift straight up turning your airbrush on and just letting the air flow out of it go around and anything that wasn't attached to the cookie like the extra will just blow right off again i'm not pulling the trigger so then you have some shimmer to it again you can go through and lightly airbrush around your edges with the same color and there you go moving right along in our airbrush tutorial i am going to go ahead and show you how you can do a rainbow effect on cookies so let's go ahead and hmm let's just see where this takes us all right so i still have some yellow in here this is how much it goes you guys you're seeing like i have a minimal amount in here so it's going to take you a while so if you are not used to this again go back to our handy dandy paper towel when you mix certain colors you're going to get as we know the color wheel what together makes what it works the same on your airbrush machine so when i'm going to do something that is requested a lot when it comes to unicorn or tropical because of being summer is i'm going to make um like the sunset ee esque look i call it that's not really sunset i know that but i'm going to use two colors and i'm going to achieve three so i'm going to begin by airbrushing my cookie with some yellow again just light pulling of the trigger you can always go through with your ear and just dry it okay it's got a good color yellow so if i'm thinking of this in thirds all right so i'm gonna want i'm gonna do yellow orange and pink so i'm gonna take my yellow and do an over spray down here of it because i want my middle to be orange can you see that i'm going to clean out my gun and i'm going to put pink in here i'll be right back all right coming back i'm going to spray my pink right there to make sure what i'm going to do is i'm going to spray the rest of the cookie pink and then the overlap of the yellow which pink and yellow together is going to create orange do you see that coming through all right if i wanted to add blue in the corner blue and pink together make purple so if i wanted to add some purple here i could do that if i wanted to hit this corner with the blue you can make green so you can get all of these variations with just a few colors so we can try that out i'm gonna add a little bit of blue so this is blue that's in my airbrush you see it for spring i'm just ever so lightly pulling it back do you see that purple coming through now so again i only use three colors and we achieved this again just a little bit of pressure i'm barely nudging this little boy back and it's coming out so again you can take your air and dry it and then that way if you were going to do say some of these over top and spray it with gold glitter you can use a double airbrush effect i feel like one of the most dreaded colors to airbrush with is black here is the checkered flag stencil we're going to attempt to spray and pray to the airbrush gods above that we don't get that colored bleed underneath so a few things can cause color bleed again i am absolutely no expert on this this is just in my experience over saturating the cookie when you're using dark colors it's really easy to do that because we want that like deep vibrant coloring it's all about patience like i can't just be like done no it's me like a watery mess also when you're using darker colors if i'm doing like seven of these i'm gonna want to clean the stencil again it's going to be dependent upon your airbrush machine and your comfortability level every two to three cookies because i do not want any when i picking it up and it's leaking underneath or bleeding onto it any thing to transfer onto my cookie so i have black in here just tested it out we're going to start slow and steady so again same side to side motion i'm going to let a little bit of color out i'm also holding the airbrush machine directly over top i'm not coming super close i have a good distance between my cookie and my gun okay and filling in the squares okay okay then you can go back make sure it's dry you can give it a moment it should dry relatively quickly because you're doing light simple layers i guess that's where we want to build so now we're just gonna go move my gun a little bit closer and again keep going to the next one and i'm going to keep doing this until i achieve the darkness that i'm looking for on the cookie so if i want a really like muted black color and just slight variation totally can do this i'm gonna hit some air on it and i'm pulling the trigger and i can now see the black developing i have not changed the pressure all of a sudden now i'm not like okay now i'm going to pull heavier i'm going to pull heavier i'm still doing very light edition another getting there getting there sometimes i feel like with airbrush it's less is more it's like makeup when you get to that and you're like should i go in for another round i'm gonna go in for another round we're gonna see i'm just using this last round to kind of feel fill in any of the little dead face so i might move the gun a tad bit closer and if there's any other little ones left i always feel like the corners or where i have it maybe right there okay the moment of truth we're gonna live straight up yes oh my gosh you guys you don't know how nervous i was black always makes me nervous so we have these nice little crisps there is a slight oops let's get this on over spray right here i would be personally putting something on top of this if this bugs you you can take a paper towel the corner like a wet one if you can control that if not you can take a q-tip a little damp q-tip and clean up your edges little tip for you on that at the end of every airbrush experience you want to make sure to clean out your machine again using the hot water technique i also like to once i rinse it through with some good hot water it's coming out normal i like to put a little bit of everclear or alcohol whatever is sold in your area into the machine and just let it sit there for a moment or so and then spray it through i like to let it sit because anything that's a build up in here it will help flush it through sometimes which water cannot do when using shimmer or sheens or anything like that in the gun sometimes it can get clogged into here and if you were using your like metallic gold through your machines those are a lot harder because the nozzles and the guns aren't always built for that type of texture i love like my first few with the metallic when i mix the metallic um like dust in here with some everclear but then the machine starts to get clogged and that's when i use the everclear mainly to flush it through if you have a clog you can put your finger over here let me turn this down because i have black in here finger you can hear it listen to the difference okay so i'm clogging this and i'm going to pull back slightly and it's going to bubble in the listen not sure if you can hear that but there's some bubbles up in the color chamber and it helps push the clog backwards so then that way it can come out as a nice little spray so again just do this pull it back and there you go again make sure every time that you clean your machine out so it is ready for your next use you did it you finished the airbrush tutorial i hope that wasn't as bad as you thought fingers crossed go ahead and comment below a tip or trick that you learned during this video and something that you can really bring to your airbrushing game anytime you try one of our tips tricks designs tag us over on instagram we'd love to see what you guys create speaking of instagram if you have not already all details will be listed in the description box go ahead and give us a follow over on instagram if you like episodes like this we try and share as much free content as we can if you want to dive even deeper into the cookie chat you can also find our link to our patreon over on patreon our wonderful cookie chatters or our basic bakers like we like to call them also enjoy discounts on our merch as well as exclusive patreon content maybe a little airbrush tutorial that is only launched to them we love our patreons and appreciate all of our new ones this month you guys are the real bosses the basic bakers you keep us going so shout out to all of you guys thank you so much for following along and until next time i'm chelsea with rolling in the doe az we'll see you later

Channel: The Cookie Chat

Views: 31,690

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Id: A0cbYP5S3mI

Length: 42min 3sec (2523 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022