If you’ve been following me or Tangle Addicts on Facebook, you’ll have seen all the excitement as we were inspired by pictures of some henna designed cookies and thought it would be fun to Zentangle on iced sugar cookies. We made several batches with friends and family posting all of our results. Here’s one cooling rack full of ones I did for a business networking potluck. If you want to see all of the designs, check out the albums on my Facebook page.

What we learned:

• This is a SUPER FUN activity!!!
• Monotangles work best. (My first thought was to make these like tiles and we’d tangle on them traditionally with a string and all that – however, one tangle over the cookie for this size was best. These were about 3 inch cookies)
• Mom’s always know best and my Mom and Zentangle cohort, Cherie Hartwick (her blog) decided to brush on the icing instead of piping it, after I told her about all the challenges I was having with it. She said she let it dry and then did a second coat to get the coverage and look she wanted. I had problems with the pens poking through the icing even letting it set up for 24 hours. Brushing fixed it.
• Wilton “FoodWriter” pens work best. Especially the extra fine tip. Betty Crocker has some also, but we found that the color seemed to spread after a few days where the Wilton stayed. Be aware that Wilton has 3 size tips – Extra fine, regular marker, and one that looks like a brush tip.
• You can draw directly on the cookie – so icing is okay too.
• For 3D effects – Sparkle Gels don’t harden. Wilton Candy Decorating pens worked very well and they harden. The trick is that they have to be warmed up to melt the candy in the tube. We just kept refreshing cups of hot water to let them sit in when not in use. You could make your own icing like you would for making sugar cake decorations.
• Did I mention this was a SUPER FUN Activity? I had one event with friends and kids and then Mom wanted to do some at our family Christmas celebration, we decorated sweater cookies. It was a blast!

We may do something again for Valentines Day – If you try some, let us know and share your pics!!