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Hand Painted Butterfly Cookies

Hand Painted Butterfly Cookies

 
A few weeks ago, the cookie community filled newsfeeds everywhere with photos of butterfly cookies in a show support for our sweet friend Jill of Jill FCS to help her through a difficult time. It was then that I realized that I had never made a butterfly cookie* and so I created these for her.
Butterfly
The inspiration for these cookies came from this box that I bought at Michaels. Rather than trying to make a perfectly symmetrical butterfly, I just made a side view so that I’d only have to concentrate on one wing on each cookie. I didn’t want to have to worry about making the pattern exactly the same on both sides. butterfly-inspiration

Here’s what you’ll need for this project:

Most of these products are available in my Amazon Store (affiliate links – read my affiliate disclosure here)

Colors:
  • Beige icing = Wilton brown + a touch of golden yellow
  • Pink = Wilton rose
  • Blue = Wilton sky blue
  • Purple = Wilton violet
  • Green = Wilton leaf green
  • Black = Americolor super black
Start out by icing a square cookie with beige flood consistency royal icing and a round tip 3. Allow the icing to dry at least 8-12 hours. Use the edible ink marker to outline the shape of the butterfly and draw some filigree designs. 

Butterflies2 Butterflies3

Mix the pink, purple, blue and green gel paste food coloring with a few drops of alcohol or flavored extract to form edible watercolors. This process is similar to painting with gold pearl dust, which you can read about in my tutorial on how to make gold royal icing.
Paint the butterfly wings with the soft round brush. Allow the paint to dry about 30 minutes.
Butterflies4
Use the liner brush with black gel paste mixed with alcohol (use less alcohol than before to make the color more concentrated) to outline the butterfly and draw some shapes to make a pattern on the wings. Fill in the space around the pattern. 

Butterflies5 Butterflies6

Draw veins in the wings with the edible ink marker.

Butterflies7

Watch the full length butterfly video tutorial here on my YouTube channel.
*Well, there was that one butterfly cookie that I made when I decorated my first set of cookies in 2008. See more of my early work in this post.Butterfly-(2)
Click on the images below for more cookies!
 
Sunset1  s Pearl Cookies3

Amber Spiegel, founder of SweetAmbs, is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and the author of Cookie Art: Sweet Designs for Special Occasions. Amber has over 12 years of cookie decorating experience and has traveled the world teaching others how to decorate beautiful cookies on their own.

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