Unicorn Project - Stippled
This was not one of the first ideas that I came up with when planning this project. Now that I've completed the cookie, I'm going to keep this technique on the top of my list. Stippling is the creation of a pattern simulating varying degrees of solidity or shading by using small dots. It can also be called pointillism. Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat have used this technique in their works.
I thought stippling would create an interesting effect on a cookie. There are at least two ways of creating the stippling effect. A royal icing transfer can be used or just piping the dots directly on. There are pro's and con's to both ways of decorating. I went with royal icing transfers. I really had no idea how many dots I would need to cover a unicorn, so I just guessed. I made 24 purple dots, 76 blue dots, and 100 green dots. I piped the dots on wax paper and allowed them to dry for a few days. Once the dots were completely dry, I sprayed them with the same color airbrush sheen. This is a big advantage of making them with royal icing transfers because the cookie won't get over-spray on it. You can use any leftover icing from other projects and just airbrush it to whatever color you want. White icing can be airbrushed to any color, which saves the time of dyeing icing.
I used this unicorn cookie cutter again. I piped and flooded the cookie with white icing. Immediately after I started to place dots on the wet icing. I started with the larger dots and worked down in size. I used a tweezers to place the dots, which really helped. I had originally planned on making two of these cookies but I only had enough dots to make one. I used almost 200 dots on one cookie. If you are going to make a bunch of these, you have to make TONS of dots. I think the only con to making these cookies with royal icing transfers is you have to work pretty fast.