Another classic back-to-school design with Canva and Cookie Design Lab.
It’s August, and returning to school is quickly approaching. The kids (and me for that matter) aren’t ready to say goodbye to summer, but I’m hoping that making some custom cookie cutters will help me get into the back to school spirit! I’ve already made an apple with bow cutter and next I’m making a classic and versatile cookie cutter - a plaque with an apple accent.
I use Canva for graphic design, so I started with an Instagram post template and went into Elements. I searched for a wavy rectangle and chose one that is included with Canva Pro. I then resized the rectangle and changed the orientation to horizontal, and moved the rectangle to the center of the design. Of course, you don’t have to do these steps, as Cookie Design Lab will default the cookie size to whatever size you last made and won’t care if your design is centered in the file you upload.
Next, I searched for an apple and the one I liked best is available with the free version of Canva. I added it to my design, resized it, and moved it to the lower right corner of the plaque. I chose to line the apple up a bit with the waves, as I didn’t want the wave bumps to compete with the apple’s curves. I also flipped the apple so that the leaf was inside the plaque for the same reason.
At this point, I could have downloaded my image, but I might want to print this design using my Eddie. So I decided to add a message and see what messages would fit and in what font sizes. This also helped me to visualize if I liked the size of the apple to the rest of the cookie. I also played around with the outline color to see different options, again for either printing or hand piping.
Then I was ready to download the image. I always click “transparent background” but it’s unnecessary in this situation. I usually find that I need it if I use the eraser to remove certain elements from an image as it can leave unseen traces that Cookie Design Lab will pick up on. I dropped the downloaded image into Cookie Design Lab and it immediately extracted the edge of my potential cookie cutter. Cookie Design Lab defaults to the last settings you used, but when I make these videos, I take down the number of points so y’all can see how to make the edges smoother. For this cutter, all I needed to do was increase the number of points, no adding/deleting/moving was necessary.
Switching over to looking at the 3D rendering of the cookie cutter, I noticed that the apple would be in the bottom left, instead of the bottom right. Cookie Design Lab has a check box for this! All I had to do was click the “Flip Left/Right?” button to move the apple to the bottom right instead. Next, I moved on to Handle Sizing and increased the size from 0.25 to 0.375 and clicked the box for rounded handles to make the cutter extra comfortable.
The final setting I change is the transition under Blade Sizing. I like to decrease this from 0.25 to 0.125 for an extra thin cutting edge. You can view this change in both the 3D model of the cutter as well in the red, white, and blue sidewall image to the right of these settings. From there, all I had to do was save the cutter to my library and get the STL. The rest of the work will be with my splicer and 3D printing the cutter.
I can see using this custom apple plaque cutter for not just back to school, but also teacher appreciation and end of school year cookies. It could even be used for an education major graduate with their name or Congratulations on the plaque. I could use this cookie on top of a chocolate chip cookie cake as the center cookie (these are popular with my customers as gifts for teachers and staff at various times or year), as part of a cookie platter, or as a two cookie set with a pencil. I think it would also work as a solo cookie nicely packaged with ribbon or in a box, or could be paired with a gift card. This is why I love plaque cookie cutters - there’s so many options!
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