Blog: How-Tos

There are few things in life more gratifying to Julia than making special gifts for others and watching the smiles that ensue when those labors of love are shared. Here, you’ll find Julia’s how-tos for everything from cookie projects and decorating techniques to paper and other inedible crafts.

Julia M. Usher

Mass Production with Layered Cookie Stencils

Once I began using lots of colors with my new Prettier Plaques cookie stencil sets, I also started to get lots of questions about how to apply multiple colors with maximum speed and efficiency. After all, time is money, and even a

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Julia M. Usher

Spring Place Settings, Two Ways

With Easter and spring weddings fast approaching, we’re on the cusp of entertaining season! Yay! But if you entertain as often as I do, your usual dishware can start to feel tired and drab. Boo! The good news is: it’s

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Julia M. Usher

Decoupage Easter Eggs

Add near-instant glamour to dyed Easter eggs with little more than pretty napkins and craft store baubles! At the end of the video, I also show a decorating option that uses all edible elements. If you like this video, please give it

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Julia M. Usher

Vintage Gift Tag Place Cards

Call me a cardaholic, and I won’t argue with you. When I’m not cookie decorating, one of my favorite pastimes is scouring antiques malls for vintage postcards and gift tags. In this video, I show how to repurpose these finds into

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Julia M. Usher

How to Melt Chocolate Without a Microwave

This week’s video is pure technique, folks! Because my chocolate lace and doily videos stirred up so many questions about how I melt and handle my chocolate, I decided to answer you all with a video! In addition to covering how

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Julia M. Usher

Playing Cookie Catchup

Tsk, tsk! I’ve been so captivated with making cookie projects over the last few months that I’ve been remiss in posting them to my very own website! Time for some much-needed cookie catchup! My latest fixation has been 3-D cookies

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Julia M. Usher

Molded Cookies 101

Lately I’ve been on a molded cookie kick! Did you notice?! I’ve been using these lovely textured cookies left and right on so many of my cookie projects that I thought it was high time to REALLY explain how I

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Julia M. Usher

Christmas Ornament Name Tags

It’s holiday cookie swap time! After you’ve spent all that time making your favorite cookies, you can’t just toss them on a plate without any fanfare. No, no – even a great cookie needs a little dressing up for Christmas

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Julia M. Usher

Seven Steps to Flawless Rolled Cookies

Any cookie decorator knows that a decorated cookie is only as lovely as its underlying cookie “canvas”! In this video, I reveal my seven steps to flawless rolled cookies, including how to cut to minimize distortion and bake for even browning.

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Julia M. Usher

Holiday Sweets Video Roundup

As you may or may not know, I’ve been religiously producing one YouTube video per week for about a year now, and as it turns out, I’ve amassed quite a collection of Christmas-themed ones! With holiday baking at the forefront

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Julia M. Usher

How to Rubber-Stamp a Cookie

Today, I’m releasing one of the original videos in my 16-video decorating techniques DVD, which was discontinued last month. I’ll be migrating a select number (no more than half) of these videos to YouTube over time. My app (available for

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Julia M. Usher

2-D Royal Icing Transfers – Part 2

More royal icing transfer-mania! In a recent video (in the “Also See” section, below), I showed you how to make basic round and oval transfers for placing, piecework-style, on cookies. In this video, I show how to make more complex traced

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