Welcome to the Cookie Design Lab blog! We'll share tips, news, and more about using CDL, 3D printing, and some cookier-specific content such as free cutter files and matching Eddie images. In this first post, we give some background on how CDL came to be.
Welcome to the Cookie Design Lab blog! Why a blog? I thought it would be a great way to share tips, news, and more about using CDL, 3D printing, and some cookier-specific content such as free cutter files and matching Eddie images. For this first post, I’m sharing a bit more about how CDL came to exist.
What started out as a close knit community of cookiers has grown beyond our expectations, and personally, I’m nosy and always enjoy knowing who is behind the small businesses I support, so I thought it’s time to pull back the curtain a bit. So, first off, Cookie Design Lab was created for Amalea (me, the baker) by Andrew (my husband, the techy) to solve a problem I was having. Almost 3 years ago I bought an Eddie with the goal of growing the corporate side of my bakery. I started out printing logos on standard shapes like circles and squares, but I thought being able to print logos on matching custom shaped cookies would up the “Wow” factor and help my bakery stand out. But, my graphic design skills and technical skills in general are pretty basic. Around the same time Andrew bought a 3D printer (a Prusa), so I figured I’d learn to make my own cutters.
I tried some STL creators but couldn’t find one that would work for words, like most logos have, and some had a big learning curve. Plus, I’d have to switch back and forth between the creator and a graphic design program (shout out to my favorite, Canva!) to edit the outline and then try again in the STL creator, but I still wasn’t getting the cookie cutters I wanted. I was frustrated, so of course, I complained to my husband, and was surprised when he said he could create a program for me. So Andrew set to work to build a 3D cookie cutter program that I could drop any image into - even disconnected images like words - and it would spit out the cookie cutter.
What I didn’t know at the time was that a lot of other bakers needed the same thing. I saw a post of another cookier struggling to make a cutter. At that point, Andrew had the basics working, so I offered to make this cookier a cutter, but then lots of people asked about the program and if they could use it too. That’s when Andrew and I realized, I wasn’t the only one struggling! So we brainstormed more about my ideal 3D cookie cutter creator and Andrew got to work packing Cookie Design Lab with more features while I recruited beta testers.
We started with things that we thought were most important. For example, we knew that being able to edit the cutter in Cookie Design Lab would be a game-changer. So Andrew made it so that when you first upload an image, there are some green dots around it that form the outline of the cutter. You can use a slider to increase or decrease these dots, making the cutter outline less or more smooth. What’s more, you can select one or multiple dots at a time, and delete them. Or move them. Or even add individual dots instead of using the slider if you only want to control the outline in a select area of the cutter. And since there’s a 3D rendering of your cookie cutter, you can see how it will print.
Once we got all the bugs out with our testers, we launched! At first, we grew by word of mouth, and then we participated in the Sugar Cookie Marketing Vendy Blendy, which was such a fun and crazy experience as a business. During the day, I chatted with so many cookiers and took feedback and questions. Lots of people wanted rounded handles and a way to add the name to the cutter. In fact, so many that Andrew immediately started working on those features and we launched them within a week of the event! And we add more as people request them.
So what upgrades are we currently working on? I’ve been asking Andrew to add a remove background feature, so that’s coming soon. We’ve also had an increase in people asking if Cookie Design Lab makes stamps, so that’s next on the list. I also want to add more features to the library, such as sharing. But enough about what I want, what do you think would make Cookie Design Lab even better? Just shoot us an email at [email protected] and we’ll add it to the list!