Tidbits

We Are Family (Part 2 of 3)

Posted by Anne Yorks on Tuesday, June 22, 2010

On my last blog post I showed you an overview of my Cookie Family Tree project. There are 24 different family members on my cookie tree and each face has it's own unique set of characteristics. Today (my second of three posts on this project), I hope to show you how I created the subtle differences on the individual cookie designs. 

The most obvious distinction between each cookie is hair color and style. Some of us have short gray hair or long brown hair or spikey blond hair.  Here are a few close-ups of the variety of colors in our family. 




We have lots of brunettes, silver/grays, and a few blondes. 




Eye color was the other very distinctive factor between each person. We have blue, green, and brown...





So eye and hair color were the most distinguishing features between us. But I wanted a way to distinguish children from adults and males from females. So I made a little list of guidelines...


THE MOUTHS

I had three types of mouths...

The adult females got a toothy grin...




The adult males got a 'simple' smile...




The children got a 'cheeky' smile with the little marks in the corner of their smiles.




I did make a separate category for men with facial hair (like Topher and his dad). They got a two-line smile...but not quite as girly and lippy as the woman's toothy grin...




THE EYES - 

For the eyes - everyone had a white background with an iris and pupil. 

Men and children had similar 'plain' eyes...




And all adult woman (without glasses) got luscious eyelashes...




Cookies without glasses got color coordinating eyebrows. But if the cookie had glasses, then they didn't get any eyebrows or eyelashes. This went true for both men and women. 




THE NOSE

I decided to make two kinds of noses, one for adults and one for children.

All of the adults got the longer skinny noses.





All of the children got a cute little curvy button nose.





EARRINGS:

Both my mom and Toph's mom wears earrings on a regular basis.

My mom likes the stud variety...so I gave her pearl earrings...




And Topher's mom seems to wear more dangly earrings. 





How do we look? Here are my niece and nephew with their cookies...





And here is my little family...





Did you read all the way down this far?  Maybe this is just too much detail!?! 

I guess for some it might be, but for me, I think it's those little details that makes the project so much more fun. And of course, it's the details that makes each cookie unique. I just think it's pretty amazing that we all have the same facial structure: eyes, nose and mouth. And yet, with billions of people in the world - we each have subtleties that differentiate us from each other. 

My last post on the Cookie Family Tree project will be out later this week and will focus on the accessories that I made for each cookie. You've already seen Toph's, the guitar, but wait until you see some of the other cute and funny props that went with each cookie!

Have  a sweet day,
Anne