One of the best things Callye (SweetSugarBelle) has taught me is to not settle for only shapes for which you find cutters......or to submit to the shape a cutter gives you. I guess I never thought outside the box in years past. I figured you were limited to only making shapes you had cutters for.....and those shapes were somehow "sacred". But no more! Now I realize that just because a cutter forms a certain shape doesn't mean I can't change it. Also, I've learned that I can make almost any shape by putting pieces together from cutters I already have. And finally, if neither one of the above gives me the cookie I'm longing to make.....then I can use a template and cut it out myself.

You know what that means? The sky's the limit. Any cookie shape you have in your head is doable! You just have to decide how you are going to make it happen.

For example......sometimes I'm picky about certain aspects of a shape. So after I cut out the cookie, I change it with my own bare hands. hee hee

For some reason, I don't like the rounded bottom of this mitten shape......

so I just took a knife and pushed it up against the bottom to flatten it. Then I squared the sides to make it more boxy looking. And ta-da........it looks the way I want it to.

And here is how it turned out all decorated...........


Some of you may be thinking....."Boy, who cares if it is rounded or boxy on the bottom." If you're thinking that.....I appreciate your flexibility and ability to "go with the flow". However, in my way of thinking.....if I'm going to take the time to make dough, roll it out, cut a shape, bake it, put various colors of icing in bags and pipe it on the shape, and then clean up the mess........then I want it to look exactly the way I prefer in my head. Maybe it is just me, but why go to all the trouble if I'm not as happy with it as I can be.

More about cutting shapes coming soon.

Here's another cookie from my winter 2011 collection.