If you’re the sort who has to spell out words in your spoon as you eat alphabet soup, you’ll find that this innovation lands right in your wheelhouse. Yep: 3D printed cookie cutters based on some of the most famous fonts in typography.
Wouter Nicolai says he started making his cookie cutters a couple of months after he built his first 3D printer, and his product line just went on from there.
“During the first couple of months, I got more and more used to my printer – an Orca 0.4x – and at one point, I wanted to bake some cookies,” Nicolai said. “At that time it was Sinterklaas in the Netherlands, so I decided to try to design a Sinterklaas-themed cookie cutter for myself. This took a bit longer than expected because I wanted one that could cut nicely through the dough instead of squashing it.”
Nicolai says that after several test versions, he ended up with a viable design and thought that others might be interested in what he’d made. Feedback from his friends led him to open his Etsy shop, where he initially offered just the Sinterklaas deisng, and he was thrilled when he found he’d sold five of them on the first day. Nicolai adds that he soon began receiving requests for special shapes, and as a result, he now makes custom cookie cutters.
From his shop’s beginnings in 2012, he’s now using several 3D printers which he’s designed or modified specifically to make his cookie cutters. The cutters are made from biodegradable PLA, and his printers are powered by solar electricity; everything about his business is as sustainable as possible.
Based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Nicolai went on to add Christmas tree, gingerbread man, snowflake, and now, typographical cutters to his shop. The font-centric cookie cutters come in classic typefaces from Futura to Garamond, but Nicolai says he’s more than happy to create typeface cutters from nearly any font you might want.
Comic Sans cookies, here were come.
The line of cookie cutters are available in a variety of different typefaces like Helvetica, Baskerville, Futura, and Garamond, and they’re priced as individual letters starting at around $6-8 each, or as sets which spell out the full name of each font for around $40.
To date, the Printmeneer shop on Etsy has sold nearly 7,000 of the cutters in total, and you can check out the full line of cookie cutting goodness here, or visit Nicolai’s website.
As an added bonus? Nicolai also includes links from his site to cookie and ‘biscuit’ recipes like these honey biscuits and these ginger-pear hand pies— and the finished products look tasty indeed. Are Wouter Nicolai’s 3D printed cookie cutters something you’d use during the holidays? Weigh in on his work at the Printmeneer 3D Printed Font Cookie Cutters thread on 3DPB.com.
