Transferring an Image Without a Projector

Today’s post is from the very talented Krista Heij-Barber from Cookies With Character.  I am excited to share this with you, because it’s not only adorable, it’s a great tutorial on transferring images to cookies without expensive equipment!  Take it away Krista!

 

Kopykake projectors are awesome, we all have heard this. However they are not cheap. If you are a hobby cookie decorator or just not ready to make that investment, but want an easy way to transfer images, I have one for you… and all I’m going to use is tissue paper and a sharp pencil or food color marker. Yep, thats it!

 

 Supplies Needed for this Project:

 Baked Heart Shaped Cookie

 Icing in Red, White, Black and pink- 15-20 sec.

 Sharp Pencil or/and Food Color Marker

 Tissue Paper

 

For this I used plain tissue paper that you use to wrap presents etc. Just cut a small square just larger than your cookie. Trace your image from a printed copy onto the tissue paper. I used the food color marker to start with and I will show you more later. However, you can use either pencil or marker at this point, it doesn’t really matter.

 ** Don’t mind the “grey” print. Yours should be black. My printer was low on ink and well, I was a tad lazy. 😉

Start by flooding a red heart on your cookie. *Very Important! LET DRY AT LEAST 8-12 HRS. Since we will be putting pressure on the icing, we don’t want it to cave in.

 

Place the traced image onto the dry, flooded cookie. Making sure it lines up with the bunny’s nose at the bottom tip. Now, you can choose either the marker or the pencil to trace. Just go over the existing lines that you just traced, once again.

 

You can see here that I did the bunny in marker and the wording in pencil. Since the red is considerably dark, the pencil “carving” shows up better than the marker. I was worried about the marker below bleeding into the white icing, so I tried using a pencil. Any sharp- yet not too sharp tool would work as well. Just make sure it doesn’t rip the paper too much.

 

 

Next flood the ears. While they are still wet, drop in some pink lines for the inside of the bunny ears.  Let dry a while so you can get a nice definition between the ears and the head. Flood head shape, leaving a spot for the nose. While head sets up, place two black sugar pearls for the eyes or wait and pipe black dots later. I used these SUGAR PEARLS.

 

 

 

Pipe pink nose and one strand of hair a top his little head. While nose is still wet, drop a line of white icing into nose with either a scribe or a toothpick and pull it across.

 

 

 Pipe paws in either two lines or one at a time. Leaving time in-between to dry.

 

 

 Finish strands of hair and paws.

 

 

 

 
Now it’s detailing time. My favorite part! As you may notice in most of my artwork, I add eyebrows. It may not be needed most of the time, but I feel as though it adds just that little something. They can either be piped on or painted on. A lot of times when we decorate cookies, we use dot eyes for simplicity purposes. However, dot eyes can be very tough if you are trying to convey a certain expression. Without pupils to look to the left or up, it is the eye brows that can add so much!

*Although having said that, my poor little bunny looks more scared than innocent. Oh well, not every cookie is a masterpiece. Just eat it!

  

 You can choose a lace border or dots. Its up to you!

 

 

As you can see from my supplies picture, I decided to challenge myself and NOT use any tips. I use these super soft decorating bags that were recommended to me by my friends Nadia (My Little Bakery) and Jill (Jill FCS). Nadi from My Little Bakery uses these bags exclusively and does the most amazing work!!! After decorating with these bags, I bow to her even more. They are fantastic if you want to throw out your 0 or 00 tip. I could never get them to work. But all this black piping was done with these awesome bags. So I will keep them for that and just choose to watch Nadia do her wonderful cookies!!!

Here is the printable template I used for the cookie: