Jim Dine Decorated (paper) Sugar Cookies

Jim Dine was our inspiration for these freshly baked "paper" sugar cookies! I found a bunch of aging manilla paper and cut it in half to form a 6x12 pieces and had seen an art lesson like this on Artsonia a while back. We discussed and looked at heart art by Jim Dine. For this lesson I really wanted to keep the creativity open so I simply gave them the criteria and order of supplies to be used and brainstormed with them.

First students traced hearts (4, 2 on each sheet of 6x12. This cut down on time and frustration of trying to fit 4 hearts on a 12x12) with pencil. Then cut out. This is the sugar cookie dough!

Meanwhile, paint with either pink or red on the ribbed outside edge of the plate. That's the only part that will show because of the lace doily and cookies overlaping on top. While the paint is drying. I tell students to trace their sugar cookie heart on the colored 'icing' or colored construction paper. I had lots of different pinks and red out of cut construction paper. Then fold in half to trim the outter edge all the way around to make it smaller so when you glue it on, you'll still see the sugar cookie edge. I told students to think about adding sprinkles and pattern by drawing it on or coloring it in with oil pastels.



some students came up with the creative concept to make it look more like
a true cookie by making it look like a bite was taken out of it



After icing and detail is added, I told students to glue the hearts to the doily incase your plate with paint on it is still drying. If ready and slightly wet, you can still glue on the doily, just be careful. Then, for the best for last. I had out white shiny Tulip fabric paint with some red glitter, pink glitter, and silver glitter fabric paints. I said it gives it the detail and effect of piped frosting! Neato. Oh and it gets better. I had a 'crystal sugar' (clear crystal glitter, not real sugar) station that you can sprinkle on if desired for the crystal sugar effect and it sticks to the fabric paint. The key is to keeping the small container of glitter in a box, putting the plate in the box, sprinkling the glitter, shaking it and then removing it. This conserves the glitter and the mess. It's easy to take the leftover glitter in the box and pour it back in the glitter container to be used again, and there's no real big mess everywhere either for our custodian!

supply table



student work. Look a heart arrow and glitter piped frosting!



good enough to eat!