Frugal Friday--Make Your Own Cookie Cutters

The finished product, with cream cheese frosting and smarties for hubs and M&Ms for headlights.
My kids and their friend Arianna cut out animal cookies with the extra dough the following day.

20 cookies ready to be wrapped and frozen. I made them a couple of weeks ahead of time because I knew I'd be plenty busy with party preparations right before the party.

My FREE racecar cookie cutter, made from a large heart-shaped cookie cutter.

My little boy wanted racecar cookies for his birthday and yet I couldn't find a racecar cookie cutter anywhere in town! I found them online for 70 cents but I couldn't stomach the $8 shipping charge, nor did I think it was that cute of a cookie cutter anyway! So, I looked up a bunch of sites on the web and got some inspiration from other moms whom have made their own cookie cutters. Most of their ideas involved heating old cookie cutters or metal bands and were really complex. One lady spent a ton of time making a cutter from tinfoil pie pans. I decided to try this and quickly was able to make a car shape with the help of some tape, but it was quite flimsy. As I was finishing up this tinfoil car, I realized that it was worth a shot to just try and bend an old cookie cutter of mine to make a racecar. I didn't bother with heating the metal or trying to use plyers. I grabbed one of my large heart cookie cutters (I have a few different heart ones anyway) and started bending. Within just a few minutes it was perfect and I had exactly what I needed for FREE!