How to Decorate Festive CHRISTMAS TREE Cookies with Royal Icing!

hi everyone this is grace and welcome back to my youtube channel today we are going to learn how to decorate this epic set of 16 trees so first up is this ombre paintbrush design the first thing i'm doing is piping on piping consistency this is somewhere between a soft and a medium peak doesn't really matter which one you use and i'm kind of messily just piping this on and doing a little bit of an intersection in between the two different colors to kind of help that ombre look along you're ultimately going to use a paint brush on top of this so you really don't need to worry about how neat it is there is a balance though in how much icing you use there is such a thing as too much and there's such as such a thing as too little you can always add more and you can always take it off but just keep that in mind so i am using this flat brush from borderlands bakery i will link these brushes in the description of this video and i'm just kind of messily painting the color i want the look to be kind of rustic and textured and messy so it works i did clean off my brush just a little bit because i had too much icing on the end of my brush and as i'm doing this i'm starting off by just brushing the pure color itself and then going into the section that kind of blends it together i wasn't going for a super meticulous ombre just kind of a blend in between the two colors so this really worked for me and i just chose to go from dark to light you could probably go from light to dark whatever makes the most sense to you it is super helpful to pick a paintbrush that really fits the size of the design and for me this was this was perfect it wasn't too big it wasn't too small so cleaning up these little bits to make sure i don't have too much icing and i'm getting the nice ombre between the colors the good texture that i'm going for and now i'm spritzing edible glitter it is the sugar art diamond dust in white i'll link that in the description my absolute favorite edible glitter and there we have the ombre paintbrush so up next is the dot knife cookie as i lovingly call it this is easy but it's time consuming especially the way i did it because i alternated colors if you want to take less time on this design don't alternate colors like i did do yourself a favor just do maybe one color for each row or one color for the entire tree that works too so i'm alternating medium peak piping consistency here i think the medium peak is important so it still really maintains integrity in between all of the dots a soft peak you could get away with for sure a stiff peak i think would just be it would be too stiff but actually if you're going to do anything go on the stiffer side than the thinner side and here i am piping these nice big dots and not being really meticulous about making sure that they are smoothed out if i wanted to be maybe i could take a scribe and kind of settle out the dots before doing the pull with the knife but you all know me at this point i only have so much patience and that was a level of patience that i just wasn't willing to have so i left the dots kind of textured and i like the end look so we good in this case i just want to say that i'm i edited out all of the transitions here so this is moving probably twice as fast as it actually did in real time it's still real time speed of me moving but every time i switched that bag and cleaned off my knife in between i just wanted to take that out because y'all we ain't got time for that this video is long enough so i'm actually just using a kitchen knife here i was going to use my offset spatula but when i went to make this i realized my offset spatula was too big so the best tip i had was my kitchen knife i didn't love it just because the end of it wasn't totally rounded but it was good enough this tree looks great so use your kitchen knife if you have a mini offset spatula that's what i need to get then use that or use the end of a very small teaspoon you want to make sure that whatever you're using matches the size of the dots that you're pulling and what i do love about this design is that it is done in one step so once i am finished doing all these dots this cookie is done there is no drying in between layers it is done done done you could add maybe some diamond dust on top of this to add some extra sparkle but i wanted to just leave it as is it is a good amount of icing so if you don't like cookies with a lot of icing something to keep in mind but i'm just going for beauty at this point and the last little guy at the top is probably the hardest cleaned off just a little bit of the extra and that is the knife dot cookie up next we have the negative space line tree for this and almost all of the trees in this set i am doing a one consistency outline and flood that means that i'm using the same consistency to both outline and flood the cookie it is what i call a thick flood which if you're doing seconds is somewhere in the region of a 20-second flood i don't use seconds anymore i base it off of how the icing falls off the spoon so a thick flood for me just barely falls off the spoon into the bowl in a continuous trickle a fast excuse me a thin flood will just fall right off in a stream right off of the spoon quite quickly but this just barely comes off and what that does is that it is thin enough that it will settle flat sometimes it needs some encouragement but it is thick enough that as long as you're applying the right amount of icing to the cookie it will not actually fall off the size of the cookie now i certainly still have plenty of times when i get a little get a little spillage and i have to fix it and that's just part of decorating cookies so i've allowed that to really thoroughly crust and now i'm moving on to the most time consuming part of this cookie buckle up this took me about 10 minutes it is not for the faint of heart a lot of people have said oh man i can't believe you use a projector what patience but actually the projector and using this image saved me so much what this allows me to do is to actually pipe one color at a time instead of one line at a time i'm alternating the colors every third color to get the ombre look that i have with my greens here so i'm piping every third line if i was not using a projector i'd have to pipe one line at a time so i can really get the right spacing in between the lines the image that i'm using here is i just found a stock photo of lines on google and then i took that photo and on my ipad i actually just drew out that triangular tree that you see in the middle super simple i lined it up with the lines to make sure i was going to get just the right tree shape pardon my slowness sometimes sometimes it takes me a minute to find my words to describe everything so what can i say about what i'm doing right now piping straight lines is hard i am using what looks like a medium peak piping consistency i'm fairly certain that all of my piping consistency throughout this entire set is a medium peak i did that because i had a variety of types of details that i was doing and sometimes for me a soft peak doesn't just doesn't hold its shape quite well enough at least the soft peak i do for all the detail that i want to do so to pipe lines straight you really want to lift the bag off the cookie and guide the icing what i'm doing right here is when i start the line there's a little bit of a bead and i want to make the lines look like they melt into the cookie i'm able to really cut the line off when i end it on the other side but starting it's a lot harder so that's why i was taking that scribe to kind of um to kind of cut off the the beginning of the line now that is a level of meticulousness friends that i don't normally do and you certainly do not need to either but i just had this vision for this cookie and i wanted to look as perfect as i possibly could so i took the extra time to use that scribe to cut off the beginning [Music] and honestly i'm really glad i did because i do think that it helped to add to that seamless look of all the lines so back to piping straight lines it all starts with how you're holding your bag and i always have a point of contact on the table and that's super important and you need to figure out what's most comfortable for you is it your elbow is it your arm just above your elbow is it your mid arm what is that part of your arm called i don't know but the part of your arm between your elbow and your hand uh for me it's typically either my elbow or just above my elbow um in the area closer to my hand if that makes sense so or just i should say just below my elbow my arm is out straight so i like to do that because it still gives me a good range of motion uh a good radius on my arm if you rest your arm too far down closer to your hand you're not going to have enough range of motion to really decorate properly i personally do not need to brace my piping hand but a lot of people even expert advanced cookiers will brace their piping hand with their other hand so i'm right-handed which means i would place my left hand a finger either on my palm or on the piping bag itself that's also something you can do if you have kind of a shaky hand i just have i think a naturally not shaky hand and i feel like i have more range of motion when i don't brace it with my left hand so i just use the table and then as i was saying earlier the way that you actually pipe the lines is you have to lift the bag off of the cookie surface so it's kind of hard to see at this angle but if you really focus you can tell that i'm lifting that bag and it depends i might lift it anywhere from half let's see a quarter of an inch to half an inch to maybe even up to an inch depending on what i'm doing up to an inch i usually do for more like curved continuous lines that's really the secret to a straight line i think these were really hard straight lines for me so i probably only lifted it about a quarter of an inch because i was going really slowly and you really have to figure out the perfect medium of how much pressure to apply in your bag based on the thickness of your icing and then how fast to move your bag so it's a lot of things to think about if you struggle with lines i would suggest trying on a piece of paper first maybe print out just a series of lines or even if you have lined uh lined notebook paper just practice tracing those lines i would say starting it is after you get a straight line then figuring out how to start it is the next hardest part and a lot of people struggle with having a bead at the beginning of the line i would not i would not focus on that at the beginning just focus on getting a straight line if you have a bead it's fine the bead is the next step okay let me figure out how to get rid of the bead at the beginning of the line and again a lot of that is just knowing how much pressure to apply in your bag and how fast to move your bag to get rid of that bead you really need to move quickly so you the second the millisecond that you contact that surface with the bag you pull it up pull it off of the surface the longer you leave that bag touching the surface with the icing the bigger that beginning bead is going to get so every few lines i am actually cleaning off the tip of my bag because i find that it it gets a little extra icing on the tip sometimes and since i'm being so meticulous at the with the beginnings of my lines here i want to make sure that i don't have any extra icing on the beginning of that line so i think i'm going to leave you here staring at these lines and i'll come back when they're done [Music] [Music] [Music] last line that was a doozy but i love this cookie so much so worth it next up is this one tone brush embroidery i've done a lot of brush embroidery in my day but i've never done a single tone this was very exciting for me when i say single tone that means that i'm doing the same color in the brush embroidery as the base of the cookie so as i have done with the previous cookie i am outlining and flooding with one consistency get a ton of questions about how to color such dark icing i'll admit this was a mishmash of colors but generally to get a dark green like this i'm starting with kind of a standard green color out of the tube adding a little extra blue and black is the key just add a little bit at a time until you start to get the hue that you're looking for it's also really important to let dark colors develop please let them develop developing means just letting them sit and they will darken on their own even in just 30 minutes it will get darker but 30 minutes one hour six hours overnight is even better when you're doing these really dark cookies dark colors so i was just going for dramatic effect there letting it settle and using my scribe just to give it a little bit of extra encouragement so i allowed that to quite significantly crust and i'm going in piping with this medium peak piping consistency and i like to have a really thick border line when i do brush embroidery it's just i suppose personal opinion and i'm using a rounded squared brush here and i'm just pulling at the icing i'm probably pulling it about half of the thickness of that line if you pull too much you'll lose the definition of the beginning of that line if you don't pull enough then you won't get quite enough of the brush texture sometimes it's intentional for effect if you want more or less brush texture it's up to you it's up to the design that you're doing to get that thicker line like i'm doing i'm applying a lot of pressure but i could also just potentially pipe one line and then pipe another line right next to it whatever you're more comfortable doing and my brush is damp when i'm doing this so i dip it in water and then i lightly dry it off on a paper towel and for me i find that works best but if your brush is too damp you're not going to get the definition in the brush strokes it's just going to look smooth so again that's kind of a balance but i do often clean off the brush in between sections and yes another great way to do this is if you did these lines in white then it would look like snow absolutely i was just going for a monotone look because that's what i wanted for this cookie but white would be beautiful too for some snow effect and that is the brush embroidery tree up next we have the crinkled parchment tree so as always as i've been doing this is a one consistency outline and flood now i'm going to be adding a good amount of other icing on top of this as a wet on wet so i'm quite intentionally going to very under flood this base if i were to normally flood this base and then add all this icing on top of it it would definitely fall over the edges i also want to not quite flood all the way to the edge since i'm using this parchment paper technique when you press down with the parchment paper it will squish the icing a little bit so give yourself a couple millimeters on the edge it's a little hard to tell here but i did not flood all the way to the edge you could certainly do this technique without this wet on wet i've done it without the wet on wet but i wanted to mix things up a little and give it a little design before i did the parchment paper going in with here with my favorite scribe just to kind of blend it together mess it up a little bit there we go i kind of hit the surface of the cookie it's best when you're using a scribe for wet on wet to not actually touch the cookie you're just dipping into the surface of the icing and i felt like i lost a little bit too much of that base green that i was going for so i just went in and added a little more and used my scribe to kind of help blend it in again now this parchment paper i'm using i crumpled this twice i crumple it once i open it up turn it inside out and crumple it the other way just to get what i think is a good base of crumple and i like to press from the inside out uh you want to make sure that you are pressing all the way to the edge of the cookie so you get the shape of the cookie and then pressing from the outside in kind of i think helps best to prevent against too many air bubbles i think some air bubbles are totally fine it's part of the effect so i let this dry overnight you must allow this icing to completely dry and you can see i definitely have some air bubbles in here totally fine it's kind of a messy funky look and this here is the sugar art sterling pearl in wedding gold mixed with everclear i'm using my favorite detail brush here i will link all of these products in the description of the video and i just wanted a little extra something something with some gold there's no rhyme or reason to how i'm painting it on right now just wanted something extra and there we have the crumpled parchment tree so up next is the etched plaid cookie just like the other ones i'm doing a one consistency outline and flood on this cookie it's really important when doing a single consistency to still do a thinner outline and since this is a flood consistency i'm barely applying any pressure on this bag it's mostly just falling out and i'm guiding it and then i go in and i apply i would say medium pressure to get a thicker outline here to hug to hug the original outline i don't want to overflood that part and then i do apply more pressure at this point to get more icing into the center of the cookie but there really is a lot of balance practice to get the amount of icing just right so it doesn't fall off of the cookie this needs just a little bit of encouragement to settle i do actually stick the scribe into the surface of the cookie to get it to jiggle like that i've allowed this to completely dry that is super important with this technique the icing needs to totally dry i'm using a ruler here this is the first time i've ever used a ruler with a cookie and i'm using my favorite scribe here there is a bit of an art i think to how much pressure to apply if you apply too much pressure you're really going to dig in to the icing and really create crevices instead of these beautiful clean lines if you don't apply apply enough pressure then it's really just more like a very superficial uh kind of scrape across the cookie if that's what you're going for that's great for this i really wanted to make sure that these lines were the star so something that happens for me when i do this technique is i love the white that it looks right now but keep in mind that the icing is not actually white underneath that it's just something in the etching of it that makes it look white i'm not using anything to make it look white but i have found and i don't understand this because it doesn't always happen but more often than not i wake up the next morning and find that the lines are no longer white they're the color of the icing so it's much less pronounced so after i'm done doing the lines i want to make sure they stay white so i'm actually going to press in some white edible powder into the lines so that they actually stay white but first i'm going to finish up these lines [Music] so on to the powder again i will link this i would actually recommend using a stiffer brush than i use because you really need to get the icing into the crevices especially with white there's something with the white if you don't really get it in there enough you will still the next morning wake up to find that the lines and the white have really faded this was just good enough but i definitely need to apply a lot of powder with that softer brush to get it into the crevices it does kind of cover the whole cookie and make it look sort of chalkboardy but i really like the effect so it's good with me if you don't mind the lines no longer being white then you don't need to do this step i think it's cool it's different i'm a fan so that's the etched plaid and then up next are the wet on wet trees they're so cute so for this first step i'm actually outlining the cookie first in medium peak piping consistency i don't do this a lot but i'm doing this specifically because i'm going to be doing wet on wet and especially with a larger cookie surface i just prefer to do two consistency for wet on wet i feel a little safer like the icing is less likely to fall over the edge but then also i find with wet on wet it's easier to work with if your base is a little bit uh thinner it obviously would need to be thicker if you're doing a one consistency allen and flood so this just gives me a little more flexibility the icing won't crust quite as quickly if it's thinner so i'm keeping in mind that i am adding a wet on wet design on top of this so i don't want to flood too much i'm not adding that much icing though with the design i have in mind so i don't need to under flood it quite significantly [Music] just enough is just right [Music] so immediately i'm going in and i'm piping these trees with wet on wet you have to move very quickly so it's good also to kind of plan out what exactly you're doing before you start flooding that cookie because you really don't have much time to think you just need to do especially with my icing it tends to crust pretty quickly because i do not use corn syrup i use a more standard royal icing that does not include corn syrup so i'm going to allow this to completely dry that's really important and yes i switched the cookie your eyes are not doing tricks on you here i am again using that sugar art sterling pearl in wedding gold mixed with everclear using that detail brush this is not a super precise design another reason why i like it so just kind of zigzag away to get that in there it's most important that this is completely dry for this next step so i allow that wetting gold to dry and then i'm using this brush or excuse me pen this edible pen and it's a pretty sharp tip so if your icing is not completely dry it is super easy to poke through the surface i've definitely done it beware it's a little overkill i think to do the gold and the pen you could certainly do one or the other but i was feeling it so i went for it all this next thing i'm doing adding these dots in the negative space is a pretty common technique people use to just kind of help finish off a design that might otherwise look not quite finished because there's just too much empty space there is something to be said though to keeping something simple with empty space but in this case i thought that the dots really helped finish it off [Music] and that is the wet on wet tree up next we have the crackle technique tree so first up i am outlining and flooding of course and once i am done flooding i'm going to leave the cookie in the dehydrator for 15 minutes to just get the right amount of crust for this crackle you definitely need to experiment in your own environment for how long you need to allow the base to dry before you start poking at it if you allow it to dry less time then it will be more of a soft indentation if you allow it to dry more it's going to be more of a jagged crackle for this i wanted more crackle than than soft indentations so 15 minutes works about for me but i'm using a dehydrator it's also kind of less humid right now in wintertime so if you're living in a more humid environment you're going to need to allow it to dry longer if you're using a fan to dry instead of a dehydrator you'll need to allow it to dry longer so what i typically do is i put the cookies wherever i'm allowing them to dry and then i set a timer for me i know that it's about 15 minutes so it once 15 minutes hits then i will test a little corner of one cookie see where it is if it's good i move forward if it needs a little more time then i put it back and here i'm using a fondant ball tool but for the longest time i just use the end of a tooth excuse me the end of a paintbrush paint brush and that is totally fine you want something rounded at the end though so you can get kind of the round crack and when doing this you want to make sure you're not actually puncturing the surface of the icing you'll know that you've punctured it if you have icing on the end of your tool so it's definitely as always there's an art to everything and there's an art to applying just the right amount of pressure here [Music] so once i have done that i allowed that to dry a bit more and i am piping these dots on the top i am going to use a scribe to kind of help them settle a little bit better you can kind of see a vein running through the cookie if you can see that kind of towards the left right above where i'm piping right now and that is because i was a little too rough with this cookie before i allowed the surface to crust enough so the very lightly crusted surface of the icing kind of moved a little bit because there was too much wet icing underneath it i was not keeping it level something like that as i was moving the cookie so that happens a lot especially when you're a beginner and you're getting used to handling the cookies so just keep that in mind i allow this to dry even more after i do this one more dot felt like it needed it i'm going to allow this to dry more before moving on to the next step which is to paint on again this wetting gold i'm using a pretty thick application and a pretty um pretty dense amount of powder versus everclear you really just need to experiment with how much liquid you're using based on the powder you can always add more liquid keep that in mind i like to use a dropper to add my everclear to my powder i'm using the lid of the container here and the second i started using it i regretted it but the ship had sailed and so here i am it's better i think to use if you have any extra separate clear little containers that you can reuse with the same color in it there's always going to be some left over it will dry and then you can just reuse that powder that's left in in the little container that you've used i'm just kind of dabbing it in with this because i wanted a really thick application i found that if i was kind of painting it more that it made the application too thin and there we have the crackle technique up next is the flat parchment paper with etched snowflakes so here i am the classic one consistency outline and flood once i'm done flooding this i will immediately apply a flat piece of parchment paper there's not too much of an art to applying it but you do want to get as even of a coverage as possible use a clean piece of parchment paper please nothing that you've used to bake cookies on and you'll want this to dry completely before you pull off the parchment i know it looks like a magic trick in a second because it looks like it happens instantaneously but believe me if you try to pull off the parchment before the icing has completely dried it will look like a hot mess express you don't want that i allow mine to dry overnight i just leave them out on a cookie sheet you do not want to cover royal icing before it has completely dried it is not your friend leave it out on a cookie sheet let it dry you can kind of tell by touching it in the morning if it's completely dry or not and it should very easily just like this come right off so you can see there's a little bit of an overhang of my icing but that's okay this technique is a little more rugged so i'm cool with it just like i did with the other etched cookie i'm using a ruler here and my scribe same amount of pressure and i will be etching out these [Music] snowflakes [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do again to keep those snowflakes white i am applying more white powder and in this case i just did it around the snowflake i kind of feel like it makes it glow against the rest of the cookie and for this i do think that this softer brush brush was the right applicator so i can get kind of this glowyness around the snowflake instead of say more jagged lines or something with a stiffer brush [Music] and that is the etched snowflake up next we have the patterned wet on wet and again like i did with the other wet and wet cookie i am outlining first with a piping consistency before i actually go in with the flood consistency i do allow my outline typically to dry a bit before applying the flood consistency i do think this is kind of the safer way to go about it it has more integrity to the outline it kind of holds the icing in better but in this case i actually went in and flooded immediately for the sake of this video it worked out fine but when i'm doing more than one cookie at a time i definitely allow the outline to dry first so i'm doing a pretty extensive wet on wet design here with different colors so instead of flooding the entire base and then applying more icing on top of that there really is no one based color with this it's just a pattern of different colors so i'm just doing one at a time as you can see here and i will fill in the entire base of the cookie with flood consistency but in a pattern instead of just one color as always with wet on wet super important to move really fast here i do find it a little harder when doing something like this to really gauge how much icing i need to put on the surface here i'm so used to flooding from the outside in and i kind of know well how much pressure i need just something to keep in mind as you're doing this it was also kind of stressful honestly to get clean curves here and this entire design kind of relied on a clean flood here but i just let it go it's it's good enough um it's not it's not perfect and that's okay [Music] so once i'm done flooding i allow that to completely dry again that's really important i'm using this edible pen with a very sharp end and i don't want to poke through so i was just going with some fun funky little pattern sketches here just something to add to the design of the cookie [Music] you all know i like to add a little extra something something every once in a while and in this case i wanted some gold to add to this design so i'm just doing that same wedding gold sterling pearl with everclear and i'm using this fine detail brush from chua cookie it's so cute it's a mermaid tail it's fabulous i highly recommend it and i will link it in the description of this video and there we have the wet on wet pattern tree up next is what i am lovingly calling the puffy teardrop cookie so first up i am outlining and flooding same old samuel i'll leave you here for a minute and i'll be back when this is dry [Music] so i have let that base almost completely dry i want to make sure i'm working with a solid base that i'm not going to poke through and this here is a soft peak piping consistency that part is super important this technique is not really going to work if you're using something too thin or too thick a medium peak wouldn't really allow these teardrops to settle out into something smooth and soft like they are i'm using the pressure piping technique here which means i'm varying the amount of pressure on my bag and that's how i'm getting the larger amount at first so i approac apply a lot of pressure and as i release the pressure i'm also pulling the bag away so it definitely takes a good amount of coordination here it's more or less piping a bead and pulling away but you need to still apply pressure as you're pulling away it's not like the normal kind of teardrop pressure pipe dots where it's really just a dot and then pull away this is a dot continuing to apply pressure as you're pulling away but letting go at the same time it's a lot to think about i just really love this design i saw this uh concept first from downtown dotio megan warren she's brilliant totally brilliant and i'm using a swivel here i don't use swivels a lot but i was doing a pretty intricate design here and i wanted to make sure i was always decorating at the ideal angle so that's what this swivel allows me to do i was also just making this up as i went to be quite honest i knew i wanted to start with that initial line and i knew i wanted a couple of clusters of really big teardrops like the ones i did in the lower left corner but then after that i was just eyeing it to kind of see what the flow was and what i wanted to do from there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so i've allowed those teardrops to dry completely that's really important when applying gold you want to make sure that what you're painting on top of has dried otherwise you may be left with some not so nice craters not fun [Music] and i'm using a pretty thick application here again sometimes i find with this brand of edible metallics that i need to use two coats i really did not have the patience on this one to do more than one coat one coat was enough patience so i applied it pretty thick across my fingers it was thick enough so i wouldn't have to go back and it worked just fine and again using the cap here i do not recommend using the cap the best best thing to do is on amazon you can buy uh so some empty clear little screw top containers and you can use that to mix your color each time only use the same color in each container but that allows you to reuse what was left because it's almost impossible to use up every bit of gold every time that you mix it [Music] [Music] [Music] and there we have the puffy teardrop tree up next we have the moss technique cookie so first up i'm doing the standard outline and flood with one consistency and then immediately after i flood this i'm going to apply the quote unquote moss and all this is is crushed up graham crackers and then i took my food gel coloring and i actually did a custom mix for the icing itself for the coloring of the moss i believe that i used americolor forest green and that might have been it to be honest what i did was i thinned out the gel food coloring with a bit of everclear that will evaporate and dry off so don't worry about using alcohol and i thinned that out just a bit so it was a little more liquid and i put the crushed graham crackers into a tupperware you could also use a plastic bag and i added the food gel coloring and i just shook shook shook and i applied a little by little just to get the desired color and make sure i had a good coating you don't want to add too much of that liquid color because then your crumbs will get too wet so i'm doing it this way just for the sake of this video but please for your sake apply the graham cracker crumbs on top of a bowl it will be so much neater but i thought this looked nice for the video so here we are i have let this surface dry completely and i wanted to add just a little extra design element it's a little awkward piping on top of this moss you want to make sure that you're really piping into it so that the dots adhere to everything you also want to make sure that you have cleaned off any excess moss because if there's too much excess then you're just going to be piping on top of the excess and then it's going to fall right off which will be sad so don't do that here is pressure piping these droplets and this is a somewhere between soft and medium peak piping consistency you pressure pipe a dot and then pull away and release pressure at the same time [Music] and there we have the moss technique up next is the painted gingham this is kind of a simple design but took me a surprising amount of time so as always first up outlining and flooding with one consistency and i will leave you here and come back when it's dry [Music] [Music] do [Music] now that this flood coat is dry i am actually painting on top with icing so you can see in the corner of this video i actually have a little piece of parchment that i have squirted out a bunch of icing i did have to do that in stages you don't want to squirt it all out at the beginning because it will crust over as you're starting to paint this is a pretty messy painting job and i'm totally cool with it you could make it look a lot cleaner with a lot less icing but i was going for texture with this set so i was happy with this look and i am going to just keep painting while it's wet even on the cross sections i'm using [Music] a swivel here just so i can always be piping or excuse me painting from left to right on my lines in the way that i'm most comfortable doing it i'm obviously eyeing it here but if you needed a guide i would recommend using a ruler and a scribe to just etch the lines very lightly on top and then you can use that as a guide as you're actually painting it [Music] [Music] so i do think it's important to make sure you're doing your cross lines while the other ones are still wet so you can kind of drag through it [Music] [Music] [Music] do do [Music] do and then once the painted bits are dry i'm using this wedding gold again with a fine detail brush and i'm just painting through the center it gets a little wonky at times painting across some of the elevated texture but it's all part of the look and i'm a fan [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and there we have the painted gingham up next we have what i am calling the a wavy crackle tree so first up i am outlining with a piping consistency because this is going to be a wet on wet design and safety first friends i'm joking but this just gives me peace of mind to do the piping consistency outline first allow that to dry i don't think i will in this case just for the video because i was doing it in one one take [Music] so now i'm going in with my flood consistency to do the design and much like i did with that wet on wet wavy pattern earlier i am just actually flooding the pattern itself and not doing a base layer [Music] [Music] so again for me i let this dry in the dehydrator for 15 minutes you'll need to experiment on your own with how much time you need based on your environment and how you dry your cookies and again i'm using the end of a fondant tool it's a nice rounded end and it has two different sizes on this tool but you can definitely just use the end of a toothbrush excuse me i keep saying toothbrush paintbrush and that works just fine that is what i did for the longest time and again here you want to just crack the surface not puncture it and i am cleaning off my tool in between just to make sure that i'm not getting any icing on the end of my tool because if i do then i will just spread that icing through the rest of the design which is not the goal here and once i allow that to dry a bit more i'm now just piping some detail waves on top just because and this is a soft peak piping consistency and since i'm doing wavy lines here as i mentioned earlier i'm pulling that bag pretty far off the surface and guiding my icing to get these beautiful curves so this is definitely about half an inch off the cookie super important when trying to pipe lines like this [Music] [Music] [Music] and there we have the wavy crackle up next is the bear technique first up of course outlining and flooding this is a standard outline in flood so i'm going to leave you here and i'll be back when it dries [Music] [Music] [Music] i've allowed this surface to completely dry that's really important when doing this bare technique because you don't want to puncture through your surface and i wanted to play around with the bear technique and use some different colors instead of just doing one which is most often used there's really no rhyme or reason to what i'm doing right now just piping this out it's all somewhere between a soft and a medium peak piping consistency just making sure that i get good coverage with different colors there's a balance between just the right amount of icing not too much not too little and i like to use a wide end brush some people use other kinds of tools i was really going for as much texture and lift as possible so i was a little heavier on the icing and i'm not trying to mat this in too much this is really just an up down motion kind of blending these together trying to do one color at first before i start blending because i wanted there to still be difference in between the different colors not just one mesh of three colors and i'm cleaning off my brush in between and then after i get all these sections done now i'm going through with my dirty brush and i'm just kind of helping it kind of blend together a little bit better this those cookies actually kind of bouncing up and down which is why i have to keep holding it it does not want to stay in place when i'm doing this technique and now to add a little extra pizzazz i'm using the sugar art white diamond dust i put it on top of the paper towel because y'all this glitter gets everywhere it's a pain to clean up so do yourself a favor do it on top of the paper towel and you're good to go a little more glitter y'all and you always need more glitter so that's the bear technique and then up next actually this is the last cookie we have the peace cookie there's a little surprise at the end of this i love doing this really elegant writing across a cookie this is just an image that i found on the internet of a writing that i liked and i'm doing the standard outline and flood here so again i will leave you here until it dries [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do so i've allowed this to dry and now i'm using my wetting gold pretty wet application on the end of a brush and just tapping on top of a paper towel do this on top of paper towel again this is a messy technique and you do not want to be cleaning up this metallic so this is the surprise friends i did one take i didn't check it and it didn't focus i'm using a projector here i'm projecting a font onto this cookie i left this in here just as a teaching moment no one's perfect we all make mistakes i should have checked my video i should have done one more than one take but i didn't and here we are so i like to leave these real moments in these real time tutorials because i think it just shows you the whole process and what happens it's still a beautiful cookie a very peaceful cookie and that is the entire set of 16 trees i hope you have fun making some of these yourself

Channel: The Graceful Baker

Views: 210,594

Keywords: christmas, xmas, christmas tree, christmas cookies, cookie decorating, royal icing, decorated cookies, oddly satisfying, beginner, advanced, asmr

Id: DAgIGeB_E0k

Length: 78min 50sec (4730 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020