Welcome to A Master Creation’s Blog

Thank you for taking the time to visit! I’ve decided to start blogging simply to add my story to my creations. My work is dedicated to all that have placed faith in me to create something wonderful for them.

Aileen Master

James’ Conversation Hearts

As a cookie decorator, the biggest times to make cookies are typically the holidays. With Valentine’s day, I typically will make over 500 decorated hearts to fill orders for teachers, coworkers and especially class parties. I especially was touched when my friend Rebecca reached out to me about her son, James, wanting cookies to give to his classmates for Valentine’s Day.

Over the summer, at the young age of just 7 1/2 years old, James was diagnosed with Pre-B Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. James and my youngest daughter were in the same kindergarten 2 years ago. So, the news of James really hit hard.  We’ve been following his progress through his Go Fund Me Page ( http://www.gofundme.com/csrz6c ) James is currently on independent study, so he’s unable to be at school with his friends.  He wanted to let his classmates know that he’s thinking of them and wanted to send a simple message of “Miss U”.

I delivered the cookies to the class and the kids were so excited! They really miss James too.

James & his brother, Luke, also received their own personalized cookie.

  To find out how you can help James, please go to http://www.gofundme.com/csrz6c or you can follow James and his family on his facebook page https://www.facebook.com/prayersforjanosky.

Thank you again, James, for your kind hearted soul!

Sushi Cookies!!!

This past March, my friend Yvonne requested sushi shaped cookies for her daughter’s 10th birthday party. She had sushi as the main entree, sushi shaped cupcakes, sushi made out of rice crispies and candy. The girls also got to dress up in kimono’s and learned a few Japanese words.

I had a vision in mind, but wasn’t sure how to go about certain textures. I’ve seen jimmies used as the rice texture and I loved that idea. I also looked up clip art pictures of sushi. One thing I did want was the texture of nori sushi and I think I successfully got it!

The one challenge was the shrimp sushi. I can’t wait to retry this again in the future.

It was definitely fun to make and display on a platter just like a sushi platter!

Happy 10th Birthday to Isabella!

A Master Creation-Best of 2012

As I view this collection, I’m reminded how much I’ve missed decorating cookies. This is the smallest collection I’ve made in one year. I decide for 2012 that I would step away from decorating cookies and focus on volunteering at my children’s school. To be honest, I was getting tired of the late night hours of decorating. I was at the point that I was crying because I wasn’t having fun anymore.

My 2012 collection reflects my most detailed designs I’ve made yet. The great thing about taking less orders was the amount of time I got to spend on each design. I still got to create but didn’t have to make 300+ cookies every week.

Now that 2013 is here, I’m ready to come back to the creative world. I’ve already booked a few orders for the year and excited to see what comes next!!

So here it is, my 2012 cookie collection…I hope you enjoy!
Harajuku Favors for Ava!

Harajuku cookies for Ava’s cake

Simple hearts for Valentine’s Day

Camryn’s Birthday Cookie platter

Camryn designed this cookie for her 9 birthday

Laura & Brian’s Monogram Cookie

Laura & Brian’s wedding cake cookie

Liam’s 1st birthday basket

Jeanette’s twin baby shower cookies

Marie’s Owl & Scrabble Baby Shower Cookies

Lopez Wedding Cupcakes

Turquoise Owls for baby shower

Daphne’s 7th Birthday cupcake decorating party

Minnie Mouse Cookies for a 2 year old!

Kaelyn’s Minnie Mouse cookies

Coral Soccerball

Thanksgiving cookies for the Varney Family

Sophia’s 5 birthday Japanese character cookies

Elaina’s Hello Kitty Cake

Fondant mini Christmas cookies

Christmas Stocking for the Varney Family

Santa’s Cookies

Christmas Treats

Thanks for stopping by and hope 2013 brings more cookie designs!
Aileen

Elaina’s Hello Kitty Cake

I wish I had the talents of cake decorators!  Designing cookies is one thing, but cakes are not my favorite to decorate. I love seeing all those awesome three tier cakes, topsy turvy cakes, fondant, gum paste flower, buttercream ruffles…I could go on!

For my daughter’s 5th birthday, she requested a Hello Kitty cake. The last time I made her a cake was for her first birthday.

Although the end results came out okay, I look at this cake and see lots of tears shed, many little flaws and 5 hours of work just decorating! This was one of my breaking moments that told me I wasn’t a cake decorator.

Now that Elaina’s 5th birthday was here, I wanted a cake that would feed all our guest and look cute. I went to the local wholesale store to purchase a full sheet cake. I originally wanted white frosting with chocolate cake, however, they only provided two types of cakes, white cake/white frosting or chocolate cake/chocolate frosting.

I specifically asked for them to score the cake which makes it easier to cut the cake in 48 slices evenly. But the main reason for the scoring was because of this next picture…

As you can see, the cookies fit nicely in the squares. This also allowed my daughter to put the cookies in patterns.

Last cookie down!

Now comes the letters!  Here’s a little trick, when I’m designing with words, I always start from the middle and work my way out so the word is even. Elaina couldn’t understand why we were starting with “I” when her name started with an “E”.

To make sure every slice of cake gets a cookie, Elaina made a row of cookies along the sides of the cake.

Elaina & Hello Kitty!

Here’s the complete cake. The “Happy Birthday” letters are made out of fondant and dried overnight.

She was very pleased with her cake especially since she got to decorate it herself!

As give-a-ways for the kids, I made homemade playdough and found these really neat plastic containers that stacked on each other nicely. Also attached were cookie cutters I bought years back for another party that I ended up not using.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Baking Everyone!
Aileen

Lopez’s Wedding Cupcakes

I love when I get phone calls from old friends that delivers wonderful news that make me jump up and down!  We’ve known Manny & Christina for over 13 years. My husband and Manny have known each over 25 years. They are like family to us and when they announced they were getting married, we couldn’t be more happy for them.  A true surprise was getting the call asking if I could make their cupcakes for their wedding.  I couldn’t say no.

Manny & Christina’s wedding color theme was black, white and red. Manny designed their wedding invitation and they wanted the cupcakes to mirror that theme.  They chose their favorite cupcake flavors: Lemon, Red Velvet & Vanilla cupcakes. My inspirations came from the following: http://pinterest.com/amastercreation/m-c-s-wedding-cupcake-inspirations/

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For those of you that bake cupcakes professionally, you will find that there were some challenges I was facing. The main challenge was July’s heat & humidity! It was a good thing Manny & Christina’s wedding was in the evening!  Below is the complete display of their cupcakes. The boxes were provided by the the bride. It was one of the coolest displays I’ve ever seen!

Twelve dozen cupcakes total!

Congratulations to Manny & Christina! We are truly honored to partake in your special day!

 

What’s your favorite Christmas Song?

I love Christmas songs! I love hearing it on the radio, the malls, carolers, etc. I hum “We wish you a Merry Christmas” while I bake, I whistle “White Christmas” while I wrap presents. My kids also get into the holiday spirit and sing along. So what’s your favorite Christmas Song?

Here’s a few of mine:

May your holiday be filled with lots of love and laughter. As I tell my kids, it’s not the gifts that you receive that’s important, but the joy of giving to those you love.

Happy Holidays you and your family!
Aileen

Halloween Cookies Fit for a Box

Two posts in a week is a little bit strange for me, but I was so excited about this project that came to play over the weekend. After Cookie Camp, I was so inspired by the talent that I had the urge to create something out of the ordinary.

About a year ago, I bought these candy boxes from Papermart. I had plans to do something with them, but they ended up being to small. So I was stuck with 50 candy boxes and they sat in my closet until this weekend.

I was inspired by two very talented cookie artists, Lilaloa and Karen’s Cookies. Lilaloa’s Halloween Cookies and Karen’s Cookie Halloween Cookies, became my inspiration for this idea. You don’t necessarily have to have specific shaped cookie cutters to decorate cookies.

My FIRST design was based on the famous candy…Candy Corn!

Candy Corn Puzzles

During this time of the year, I can’t get enough of candy corn! So I thought this was a cute idea.

Who wants candy?

My SECOND idea was simple, but so darn cute!

3 cute spiders

And here’s how they look inside the box.

Spiders in Candy Box

My THIRD design, I thought of my three little girls and their puzzles. How fun would it be to get a box of cookies and get to play with them AND eat them after.

And here it is in the box.

My LAST design was actually my first design when I came up with this cookie in a box idea. I think this is my favorite pumpkin cookie I’ve ever decorated.

Pumpkin Puzzle

The placement of the cookies end up being a nice surprise. You think you’re getting a box of orange cookies that say “Happy Halloween” but it actually is a cookie puzzle!

Pumpkin Puzzle in a Box

Here’s the complete set.

Complete set of Halloween Puzzles 2011

Many thanks to Glorious Treats for great photography tips!!!

Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I liked designing the cookies!
Wishing you and your family a Happy Halloween!!!

~Aileen Master~
http://www.amastercreation.com

A Camp like no other…

As most hobbyist, the internet became my muse over the years. Researching, reading, commenting on every kind of cake/cupcake website. There were tons of pictures of cakes and cupcakes but only a few decorated cookies. I did stumble upon a few websites that had forums for cookie decorators, but it didn’t feel like home.

A lot of the cakes and cupcake pictures I loved came from a website called Flickr. I liked the idea to display my work in a gallery, but was it worth it? At the time, there were internet thieves stealing pictures of others work and passing them on as their own. I didn’t want that to happen to me if I posted my pictures. So my husband suggested I put some type of copyright on all my pictures so at least it could be traced. In November 2008, I posted my first picture:

I was nervous! would anyone like my designs? would anyone even comment? would anyone even…care? Everyday I would check to see if someone noticed me out there. Surely, one by one, comments started coming and the more pictures I posted, the more excited I felt that someone out there actually is noticing my work. In Flickr, there’s groups you can join and I was invited to my first one by Susan, aka Andovercookiemama. She was so sweet and encouraging! From that point, I start to become friends with all my cookie idols. Some would comment on my work and I’d call my husband to tell him “Glorious Treats said something on my picture!” or “I can’t believe Sweetsugarbelle liked what I did! or “You won’t believe what Montreal Confections made this time!” He thought I was crazy talking to these people.

As years went by, I got to know some of these fellow cookiers on a person level as well. Some went through happy times, some through difficult times. Some were diagnosed with cancer. Some became parents or grandparents for the first time. Some lost loved ones. Some became famous. Some just needed a place to vent. The point is…we became friends.

Two years ago, a few fellow cookie friends planned a wonderful idea to try to get us together in one place. I couldn’t attend last year but knew I had to go this year.

I could go into details of what we did each day, but our wonderful hostess (Lisa, Pam & Maryann) kept us so busy from 8am-12am. We did EVERYTHING cookie related! Cookie contests, cookie taste test, cookie decorating, cookie team decorating, cookie cutter exchange and more!

For our hostess, Lisa (akaThebearfootbaker), we surprised her with individual cookie flowers, leaves & critters.

It’s amazing to see so much love and talent all on this little platter!

One of my favorite moments had to be working with Susan (Andovercookiemama), Denyse (DenyseAL), Maryann (Cookieartisian-also our cookie camp coordinator), and Johnna (Polkadot Zebra). Our challenge was to decorated a facade of a house shaped cookie. We came up with this:

Here’s the best cookie team ever!

Here’s a few blog posts from other fellow cookie friends that wrote about our experience at Cookie Camp:
Glorious Treat, She posted all the camp sponsors, check them all out!!!
CookieCrazie, also one of the greatest cookie camp organizers!
Adozeneggs, FYI-she ships her cookies!!!
Karen’s Cookie. One our favorite sponsors!

Thank you to all you wonderful ladies that I’m so happy to have finally met in person. This trip will always have a special place in my heart. Here we all are!

Thank you to Maryann (Cookieartisian) & Daniela (SugarRushTreats for allowing me to use their pictures for this post.

Courtney’s Sailboat Baby Shower Theme

Happy summer to all.

In my long absence from this blog, I’ve selfishly stepped away from baking and taking orders to spend time with my family. It has been a wonderful 3 months enjoying every moment with my kids, my husband, my niece & nephew. The norm of late nights and lack of sleep took a toll on my health. I needed this time to re-energize my mind and creativity. With that said, I think I’ve been re-energized because I have completely fallen in love with this new creation I made this past weekend for Courtney’s baby shower.

I met Courtney through a local woman’s club we belong to. She’s has been so giving in the community throughout the years and when I got the invitation to her baby shower, I wanted to do something special for her. Being out of the baking/decorating skills for 3 months, I thought I’d be out of sync with it, but just like riding a bike, once you learn it…you never forget how to.

WELCOME BABY!

Between her busy schedule, Courtney’s a very talented seamstress. She really wanted a nautical theme for the baby’s nursery but couldn’t find the right design, so she made it herself. All the colors and designs I used were inspired by her nursery.

3 Sailboats

Sailboat Complete Set

Friends, Karen & Julie, that planned the shower, asked if I could make cupcakes for the shower and my mind start spinning with ideas…I think I went overboard but I had so much fun!!!

Cupcake Toppers

Red Velvet cupcakes

Vanilla Cupcakes

Courtney's cupcakes

I used this sailboat clipart for the cupcake toppers.

BUT….I didn’t stop there! I made the cookies, I made the cupcakes, but I still needed to make a gift. Do you want to guess what I made?
Here’s a hint…

Floating Sailboat

I’ve made a few of these diaper cakes over the years, but I think this one’s my favorite.

Courtney's Diaper Cake

And yes, the diaper cake is all diapers. It’s a very practical gift with a hint of creativeness.

It was definitely a great baby shower with great food and good company. Thank you to Karen & Julie for giving me the full reign of making these creations. Congratulations to Courtney and her husband on the new addition to their family. Can’t wait to meet the baby!!

Celebrating 50 Years…

Thank you to all that have emailed me or check in on my blog. It’s been a very busy and hectic three month for me. I’ve taken on a side project that has nothing to do with baking or cookie decorating. I’m slowing getting back into the swing of baking and hope to create more wonderful creations.

Speaking of wonderful creations, this set of cookies has been hiding in my computer for over a month now and I thought it would be a great way to start blogging again.

My good friend, Lorie, contacted me about creating cookies for a wedding basket for her in laws, celebrating their 50th anniversary. Lorie wanted one dozen sugar cookies, any design and gave me complete creativity, which sometimes gets me in trouble.

I chose two shapes for this project. First one was hearts. As simple as heart shaped cookies can be, I wanted to reflect the symbolic golden years. Love is really what brought this couple together. Their hearts are what kept it going throughout their years.

Every cookie has it’s own unique design. Again…this is what got me in trouble. When they’re all grouped together like this, it’s really pretty.

The second shape I chose was a wedding cake. I’ve designed with this shape many times, but I wanted to create something a little different for a wonderful event.

Again, all cookies have a unique design. The word “fifty” was thought of last minute because I didn’t want to use the number 50 on each cookie.

Congratulations to Jim & Cathy!!!! And thank you to Lorie for letting me be part of their special occasion.