Balzer Designs

Adventures in Arting Podcast: The Art of Pairing with Jenn Mason

I'm super excited about today's podcast because it's one of our few repeat guests. Mom and I have been doing this podcast since 2011!!! And we've only ever had a few people loop back during that time. Today's guest is Jenn Mason, the former Editor-in-Chief of Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine. If you do not see the podcast player above, please click on this link. You can listen to a podcast anywhere and at any time. It is a recording that is available to you whenever you'd like to listen. If you'd like to download it to your iTunes library, click... Read more →

Marbled Heart Cookies

Happy Valentine's Day! These are, hands down, the easiest cookies I have ever frosted. If you ever wanted to make dozens and dozens of pretty cookies for a wedding, a bake sale, or a party, these are the ones because they're fast and easy with great results! Watch this short (90 second) video for the how to: And here are the cookies I made: Aren't they fabulous?! The hardest part was keeping my fingers clean. I was actually sad when there were no more cookies to dip because I was having so much fun! Just remember, you have to use... Read more →

Quilt Block Cookies

As I mentioned last week, my quilt guild held a day of workshops on Saturday. We had a pot luck lunch and I brought cookies. Quilt block cookies. Each cookie was a half-square triangle. And just like a quilt, when you put them all together, you get lots of different patterns! I made four different "patterned fabrics" using royal icing: It was my first time doing two different cookie icing techniques: wet in wet and one consistency piping. What does that mean? "Wet in wet" is when you layer different colored icings while they're still wet. This way they all... Read more →

Floral Cookies for the New Year

I had a bunch of gingerbread dough leftover from my adventures in gingerbread house making. So, I decided to use the dough to make cookies for the new year! I thought I would share an icing flowers tutorial that I found very helpful: I love the way these cookies look, but I have to confess it's a bit too much icing for the cookie -- taste wise. Too much sugar! (I've been scraping off the flowers before I eat the cookies.) On a side note, the gingerbread has held up really well and is still soft, a week later! Next... Read more →

Best of 2018: Painting, Food, and More

For the next few days I'm going to be sharing a series of "best of 2018" posts: Best of 2018: Painting, Food, and More Best of 2018: Art Journal Pages Best of 2018: ScanNCut and Stamping Best of 2018: Blog Posts To compile these posts, I've read back through an entire year's worth of blog posts and picked my personal favorites to highlight. Enjoy! Painting -- I really did a pathetic amount of painting this year. I hadn't realized how few pieces I completed until I starter looking through the year's archives. Hopefully there will more painting in 2019. But... Read more →

Mini Gingerbread Houses

For this year's Christmas cookie experiment, I decided to make mini gingerbread houses. I wanted the gingerbread to actually taste good, so I tried two different recipes that promised to result in gingerbread that was both tasty and strong enough to make a house. The winner was this recipe from the New York Times. I made some paper templates and used them to create the gingerbread house parts: If I do this again, I'm investing in some cookie cutters. This part was not fun. I used royal icing to hold my houses together. And then it was time to decorate!... Read more →

Screenprinted Cookies with ScanNCut

These are beautiful custom cookies. And you don't have to have almost any frosting skills in order to make them! Yay! It's easy when you have a ScanNCut. Check out the video for the instructions: I tested this process by making cookies with my logo and discovered that screenprinting directly onto iced cookies didn't work for me: I was ready to scrap the process until I decided to roll out some fondant and see if it was the surface I was printing on rather than my technique. And it was! I used both store bought (pink) fondant and homemade marshmallow... Read more →

Cupcakes for Halloween

You know, I titled this post "Cupcakes for Halloween" but really it should be called "An Excuse to Try Russian Piping Tips." When I was doing some research about cookie decorating, I ran into lots of super cool information about Russian Piping Tips. What are Russian Piping Tips? I'm so glad you asked! A regular piping tip has a single hole at the end. Russian Piping Tips are kind of like Play Doh Extruders, but way fancier. In essentials, with a single squeeze and flick you can create a frosting flower. Watch the video: Well, I just *had* to try... Read more →

Decorated Halloween Sugar Cookies

I looooove watching cookie and cake decorating videos, but over the years I've only made fancy cookies twice: Christmas Cookies & Fall Leaf Cookies. I decided that all that video watching had to come to fruition and so I made Halloween Cookies: I bought an inexpensive set of Halloween cookie cutters and decided to cut a few of several different shapes -- in hindsight this made things super complicated. But, at the time, I thought variety was a great idea! While my cookies were baking (I used this Martha Stewart recipe), I decided to plot out my icing plan. That's... Read more →

Personalized Cupcake Wrappers

I would love to be a really fabulous baker. But, I'm not. Maybe one day. Until then, I am a really fabulous crafter. And those crafty skills allow me to make store bought cupcakes look good! These cupcake wrappers are easy to make and look fantastic. Watch the video for the how-to: You can download the free cupcake wrapper cut file here. And don't let those cut outs go to waste! Use them to decorate the tops of your cupcakes! I hope you'll give this project a try! Thanks for stopping by! --- P.S. I am a paid spokesperson for... Read more →