Gallery of Pretty Pictures

As I looked through my old Brown Bag catalogs, I realized that since they were wholesale-only publications, very few people had ever seen all of the pictures. I also took lots of pictures for display cards (called “tent cards”) and promotional wholesale mailers. I thought it would be fun to start sharing them now. There are many, many pictures. I will start with a selection, then add more as time allows.

Big Bunny, Cat With Bird, Teddy Bear, Big Fat Pig

We had been making cookie molds for almost a year when a friend from New York who was a photographic stylist called to say that a photographer that she worked with wanted to use a Teddy Bear cookie mold and freshly baked cookie in a cute little bag as a corporate gift for all his big clients. In return, he would take one professional picture that we could use for our own promotional needs. I sounded great, so I bought lots of butter, flour, eggs and spices and went to work baking.

In those days, I was oiling and flouring the mold before each cookie, just as I do now, but I was using the point of a knife to loosen one edge of the cookie to start peeling it from the mold. It took forever… and I had 150 cookies to make.

By about the 130th cookie, I had had it. I grabbed my filled cookie mold and slammed it onto the cutting board in front of me… And the cookie fell out. My jaw dropped. I had discovered the quick and easy way to un-mold cookies. I was both pleased and disappointed that I hadn’t figured it out a little earlier in the day.

 

Quilted Heart and Victorian Heart

I used lots of my own things for props in photographs. This picture was taken on one of a pair of quilts I designed and made for a friend who had twin babies, a girl and a boy. This was Katrina’s Basket of Hearts Quilt. (By the way, I used the central Basket of Hearts as a cookie mold design years later.)

The little pin cushion with the face on it was made by the friend who styled the First Photo For Promotional Display Card.

 

Folk Heart and Victorian Heart

This is a very personal picture, and one of my favorites. The black and white photos show me and my sister, Helen with our mother. I’m the one kissing her cheek.

 

Clown, Teddy Bear and Birthday Cake

This picture was a lot of fun to take. When I told my photographer that I wanted to show ice-cream sandwiches made with symmetrical molded cookies, he was very hesitant. He never told me anything was a bad idea; he would just say something like, “Are you sure you want to do that? You know, it takes about an hour to get a shot set up just right, and the lights are really hot…” Bruce hadn’t counted of working with someone who had been using plaster most of her adult life, someone who could dummy up almost anything.

So that soft, delicious vanilla ice cream spread between the cookies is really plaster, tinted with a little paint so as to look creamy. The melty residue in the ice cream scoop is the real thing, though.

 

Mr. Rabbit, Big Chicken and Easter Egg with first edition of Gourmet Cookie Book

This pretty little out-door scene was actually taken on a table in a photographic studio. I carefully assembled pieces of sod, straggling alyssum, pansies and rocks collected from my yard and purchased flowers. Bruce, always a perfectionist, went through the grass with tweezers, pulling out any un-photogenic brown blades.

The bunny belonged to a farmer Bruce knew. We came to refer to the man as the “Rent- A-Bunny Guy”. The set-up was meticulously assembled without the bunny, then he was placed in the set at the last moment. He was remarkably relaxed about the whole affair.

 

Wooly Lamb, Mr. Rabbit, Big Fat Pig, and Rolling Rabbits

I think this is the only picture I ever took that had Rolling Rabbits cookies in it. It was a design I first made as a miniature porcelain ornament for a different line of products that Hill Design produced. I loved it so that I reworked the image to make a sweet cookie mold. It is still a favorite.

Big Pumpkin and Friendly Ghost

This shot shows cookies made with different flavors/colors of dough, ginger, chocolate and sugar. They take a bit of time, but they are really fun, and it’s a treat to get different flavors in one cookie. I’ll have to put two-tone cookie instructions up on the website later. They are in The Idea Book.

Though a very straight-forward photo, with simple props, this picture was more of a challenge than it might seem. Since all catalog and promotional pieces have to be assembled well in advance of their target season, I needed to take this picture in May. Scrounging around in the bases of forsythia for last fall’s dry leaves wasn’t so hard, but finding Halloween candy in spring was!

 

Tyrannosaurus, Stegosaurus and Triceratops

Bruce and I went to the Penn State Fern Greenhouse to take this photograph. I gently layered and positioned the different green plants to form the appealing mat for the plate of cookies and napkin and draped an orchid spray across the top of the frame for some color. He was busy setting up several different light in the restricted space.

It was a Saturday morning, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. There was one professor, though, who was in the greenhouse meeting with a student. He pretended that we weren’t there, pointedly ignoring the presence of a stylist, a photographer, his assistant, and a ton of equipment. Finally, it all got to much for him, and he asked what in the world we were doing. I explained that we were taking a picture of these cookies and molds for some advertising I would be doing. He looked totally baffled, then commented, “That just doesn’t make any sense. Orchids didn’t evolve until eons after the dinosaurs were dead”. I tactfully failed to mention that cookies hadn’t either.

 

Meadow Lark, Prairie Flowers, Suffolk Sheep, and Briar Rose

I thoroughly enjoyed making the American Folk Art Series of cookie molds, and I enjoyed photographing them. Finding props was easy, because I have been to so many craft shows where “primitive” reproductions are sold. I think the lighting in this picture really makes everything pop.

 

Patriotic Bear and Cat Family Album

I set up this shot out in my garden just before lunch. The Fourth of July Fireworks were supplied by my brother, who loves pyrotechnics. I have always loved the seriously funky graphics on packs of firecrackers and the directions; "Light fuse and get away quick". Once we had the shot "in the can", we ate the hot dogs, drank the lemonade, but decided to wait until dusk to light sparklers and fire off the Black Cat lady fingers. Note: Directions for making "Painted Cookies" like the flashy Patriotic Bear are in the recipe section on my Home Page.