Last week I made very special marshmallow pops for my friend, Shanna from Pineapple and Coconut, daughter’s 6th birthday party.

Coincidentally, my mom had to make the same design for something else. Now, if you follow me you know that my mom is who taught me how to design marshmallows. We always say that marshmallow art, as with everything, it’s all about adding your own touch. We’ve made many similar designs over the years but we can always tell who has done which one because we have very distinct styles.

She adds lots of detail, more piping and her colors are often a bit lighter than mine. I like to make pops simple, bright and only use KRAFT Jet-Puffed Marshmallows.

After talking to my mom, we thought it’d be fun for each of us to do our pops then post a picture of each design and have our fans guess which one was whose.

The results were hilarious!! Just on The Marshmallow Studio’s Facebook page we got over 241 comments, 71 shares and 500 likes. On Instagram we had 31 comments and 54 likes.

Only 38 people guess correct – I made the pop on the LEFT = A. 

Here are the main differences:

My mom sugared her Olaf, I just sprinkled disco dust on mine.

She made a nose out of marshmallow and sugared it orange, I attached a chocolate-covered sunflower seed to mine.

She used licorice for the harms, I used uncooked spaghetti piped over with black icing.

She used a twist marshmallow for the base and decorated it with icing, non-pareils and snowflake sprinkles. I added a StackerMallow coated in blue sugar with a piped “6” for Kailani’s birthday.

Here are my Olafs enjoying the warm sun waiting to be completely dry before packaging.

All done and ready to go party!!

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I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about copyrighted characters and orders.

Recently I had a person, who had purchased a copy of my mARTshmallows book, contact me for a refund. She said that the book was a huge disappointment because it only had basic pops. It didn’t include instructions for “commercial” characters. Pops she could actually sell and that people were requesting. She went on to say that it should include Angry Birds, Spider Man, Monsters, Hello Kitty and more.

This was a perfect example on how it’s our job as vendors/merchants/designers/etc. to educate our customers. Most people do not understand that these famous and loved characters belong to someone. Someone took the time to design them and that person/corporation/studio/etc. own the rights to it. It’s a COPYRIGHTED AND LICENSED CHARACTER.

I immediately informed her that I could not include these and how it was illegal for me or anyone to make a profit out of someone else’s work. Plus, I even explained to her how the book is not meant to teach how to make very design but to teach skills and techniques required for “her” to make her own designs at her pleasure. No reply.

I won’t say I am completely innocent ….. years ago when I first started The Marshmallow Studio, I wasn’t aware of these law and did make a few marshmallow pop characters.

   

   

Luckily for me, they were always for my friends and not real customers!!!

{Please NOTE that I do NOT take pop orders anymore. All the pops I make are for my friends. I do not make a profit from these.}

Since then, I have made it a point to educate myself on copyrighted laws. It was extremely important for me to not break the law as well as to protect myself, my book and my designs.

It’s okay to be inspired by someone’s creativity, but it’s not okay to deliberately take it and claim it as your own. It’s illegal to make a profit off of someone else’s work so PLEASE DO NOT make marshmallow pops, cake pops, cakes, printables, etc using licensed characters or “copying” the work of something you saw on Pinterest or online.

Be inspired NOT a thief!

You can read more examples and a great further explanation on Paper and Cake’s blog HERE.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this 🙂