Hope and Cookie Stencils

A friend of mine is organizing an event to raise money for her relay for life team, Jim's Flyers.  Michele is so dedicated to raising money for Cancer research; she lost her father to Cancer a few years ago.  It is inspiring to watch Michele as she raises money throughout the year for her team.  When I did relay for life I sent an e-mail out to my family and hoped for donations.  Jim's Flyers does so many fundraising events; last year they raised over 3000 dollars at a yard sale, an impressive feat considering I made about 30 dollars on my last yard sale.  This year, Michele organized an event called the HOPE Bazaar.  She has about 20 vendors bringing their merchandise to the fire hall today and a portion of their sales goes to her relay team.  I am unable to attend the bazaar because of a JMU football game (priorities!) so I offered to donate some cookies to the cause.  


The emblem for the Bazaar was a butterfly so I searched the web and found these amazing cookies stencils!  Have you ever used cookie stencils before?  Me neither.  Basically it is a stencil that you lay over your cookie then you use royal icing to drag the design over the cookie.  There was definitely a learning curve with these.  You couldn't put too much pressure on the stencil or the cookie would break.  If you didn't put enough pressure on the stencil it would slide.  If you used too much icing it pressed under the stencil.  If you didn't use enough icing it wouldn't fill the stencil.  Eventually, I got the hang of it.  The cookie with the icing wasn't quite large enough to use the stencil with the spread wings, so I had to use the smaller stencil.  Not exactly what I wanted, but I think they turned out really cute.  (I should mention that I tried a couple of techniques on these cookies.  Before I tried the stencil with the royal icing, I tried a technique I saw on the internet to "air brush" the cookies without an airbrush.  I most definitely won't be doing that again.  It didn't work for me and the effect was NOT what I wanted.)


Here is the final result.

After I finished the purple cookies, I tried my stencil on a plain cookie.  Much easier to do, and I'm not sure which effect I like more.  I think I might like the plain cookie a little more.  They are so simple but there is something beautiful about them.  I'm going to have to play with the stencils a little more.  What do you guys think? 

Good luck today, Michele!  I hope you raise tons of money for your relay team and that people like the cookies!  By the way, if you are reading my blog, I would love to know what you think.  Leave me some love, folks!