Sign up today & become a free member!

10 PYO cookie palette ideas. Which is the winner? Curious? Watch video!

PYO Cookie Palette.

These are among the many cookie decorating techniques.

This page offers an in-depth look at 10 ways to make a PYO cookie palette. I’ll show you the successes and failures of each as I place them ‘under the microscope’ to see which method is the best.

10 ways to make a PYO cookie palette:

- Skittles

- M&Ms

- pipe and airbrush royal icing dots (royal icing transfers)

- airbrush dots on cookies with stencil

- paint royal icing dots

- use gel to paint dots on cookies

- food color markers

- use an edible printer

-make a print out via Microsoft Word or other software

-paint pods

This page covers 10 ways, but the 11th method would be:

- order pre-made color palettes from a supplier (I will be selling these in Shop Gotta-havs! before long).

Keep scrolling for lots of pictures.

Get your delicious cookies baked the easy and right way first.

*Here's a link back to PYO Cookies if you missed it.

About each of the compared PYO cookie palettes…

1. Skittles, easy, fast, no cleanup. However, you can see they did do some color bleeding in the royal icing after 2 days.

Image of using skittles for a palette

2. M&Ms are easy, fast, and no cleanup as well. Just flood your cookie and place the candies in the wet flood icing. Let them dry. Done. Note the green, brown, and orange color bled as well after 2 days.

Using M&Ms for a cookie palette

3. Airbrushing royal icing dots is easy, and pretty fast, but has some cleanup. Pipe royal icing dots, let dry overnight, and airbrush them the next day. Another method is placing them in a dehydrator (like this one-scroll halfway down that page for my favorite) for an hour and let set for 4 hours to make sure they are dry.

*Hint--keep the dots on the surface piped. That way they won't blow around when airbrushing them. 

Image of airbrushed royal icing dotsAll the dots on this page were strictly for demo purposes. You'll see they aren't very pretty. I forgot to take pictures before trying each method. Therefore they look rather messy as well.

Check out my newest favorite 'toy'...What a great little piece of equipment that every cookier needs:

Airbrush-Kit Rechargeable Cordless Airbrush Compressor -Auto Handheld Airbrush Gun, Airbrush Set Portable Wireless Air Brush for Barber, Nail Art, Cake Decor, Makeup, Model Painting
9.5/10 WeCookier's Golden Cookie Award!
  • Beauty Machine New Structure & Use Widely: Stylish appearance, no apertures on body. Portable and Compact Size, easy to carry anywhere. lower pressure rating is 20PSI, which is very suitable for airbrush gun makeup. The higher 27PSI is designed for the field of airbrush painting: art painting, cake decoration, nail art, handicrafts, model coloring, illustrations, temporary tattoos, hobbies, etc.
  • Higher Air PressureLarger Airflow: The air pressure has increased by 50% compared with similar airbrushes on the market, it is higher up to 20-27psi and the air flow reaches 6-8L, others are only 12-15psi, 6L. The nozzle of this airbrush is only 0.3mm, so it can only spray watercolor pigments, inks and dyes, as well as properly diluted paint, NOTE:Please dilute acrylic paint with distilled water or or with good quality commercial thinners specifically made for acrylic paints.
  • Auto Airbrush & Battery Level DisplayThis dual action airbrush have a white switch,just press it and the trigger to work, air will be sprayed, move the trigger back, the liquid will be sprayed, you can freely control the liquid output The amount of paint will automatically,stop working after releasing the trigger. In addition, there are one indicator lights at the bottom of the air compressor to display battery power. Before using the spray gun, please fully charge it.
  • USB ChargingFaster Charging Tech & Longer Working Time: The airbrush gun comes with a USB charging cable, because of the upgraded circuit and battery, it supports 2A fast charging tech, recommended to recharge it via a DC 5V-2A charger, it is much faster. Working time reaches 1-2 hours after fully charged, others can only reach 30-50 minutes. It is not recommended to use the airbrush kit while charging, nor is it recommended to use a charger less than 1A or more than 2A.
  • Package include1Liquid Extraction Dropper, 5 Spray Gun Cleaner ,5 Wash Needles,3 Kinds of Capacity CupsUSB Charging Cable,User Manual,A Pink Art Airbrush gun
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases

4. Another easy way for your PYO cookie palette with airbrushing is simply using a stencil with circles. This is much faster than airbrushing piped dots. Fast. Some cleanup.

Image of airbrushed circles on cookie

5. Painting royal icing dots is the same as airbrushing. With these though, you paint the royal icing dots with food color gel mixed with either Vodka, Ever-Clear, or Lemon Juice (don’t worry, the alcohol evaporates). You then paint the color on the dots. A little tedious and cleanup is needed. Time-consuming as well.

Image of painted royal icing dots with food gel

6. Using food color gel to paint the dots on a flooded and dried cookie is another way.

Painting the color on the sugar cookies is easy, fast, cheap, and does not much cleanup.

There is one caveat, however. The gel food color on a cookie is pretty concentrated. It will not taste good and also leaves the mouth stained.

I am an Americolor food color gel person myself. I love their bright and rich colors. This is not an affiliate link, but I purchase all of mine from Country Kitchen Sweet Art. The benefit of ordering through them is the shipping is $6.99 to free after $60. Not to mention they are a super company. Totally my go to for many items.

Image of painting food gel and vodka right on cookie

7. I came up with the idea of coloring a palette with food color markers. Easy, no mess.

Image showing food color markers colored on the cookie palette

8. Using an edible copier to make a PYO cookie palette is easy if you have a Cricut or Silhouette, or the like.

Simply go into the design program, make a rectangle and add however many circles you want for a palette. Change the circle colors to your preference. You will want to aim to get the deepest colors though. If you choose lighter colors, you won’t be able to see them very well after painting the cookie.

Connect the shapes with the attachment tool in the program, then make them.

If you are including these in a customer’s order, always put your business name on the palette before printing. Branding is super important.

After you have the PYO cookie palette in the program, it is fast, easy, and has no cleanup.

Image of edible image cookie palette

9. Use a program like Microsoft Word. If you are familiar with Word, setting up a cookie palette is similar. Once it is set up, you’ll always have it. You can also make various color palettes.

How is this edible though? All you need to do is copy off the palette into an edible printer on white cardstock paper.

Why would you want to use Word instead of a design program? At least in the Cricut Design Space, they have a few colors to choose from that are vibrant/deep. Word is limitless since you can use hex number codes.

Brand those babies! Remember to place your cookie business logo on the palettes for extra exposure to your customers. Not to mention, it's much more professional. 

Read more about branding to grow your business here at Talkroute. I'm not a member, I just found the article helpful in stressing the importance of branding.

Microsoft Word works well for paint palettes. Check out this extensive video on many methods for them.

10. Paint pots/pods are a good alternative and are what I’ve used for a good while now. You can find the empty pods on Amazon. I provided a link under the Amazon affiliate notification in bold below.

I take a syringe and fill them with the gel color mixture (not full-strength gel).

They are super because you can clip the line anywhere between the pods. They come in strings of 6 and if you wanted to offer 3 colors, well you just doubled the amount from 240 pots to 480--that's significant savings!


Image of empty paint pods to use instead of palette
Caffox 240 Pieces Empty Paint Pot, 40 Strips Acrylic Mini Paint Container Strip Storage with Lid for Classrooms School Art and Crafts Paint 3ml/ 0.1oz
9.5/10 WeCookier's Golden Cookie Award!
  • Special Value Pack Our acrylic paint pot set comes with 40 strips of empty paint pots,6 pots for each strip. Totally 240 pieces of paint pots that will meet your daily painting, craft project use needs.
  • Convenient & Durable Our paint containers with lids are made of high-quality plastic material, durable and lightweight, not easy to break. These empty paint strips are high transparency and help you to easily distinguish the color when using it.
  • Good Sealing Paint Container The paint pot is equipped with a lid, which can be closed tightly by lightly pressing after use, avoiding messing up, opening and closing carefully to ensure proper sealing, ideal for keeping a small amount of paint fresh.
  • Mini Paint Pots The capacity of each paint pot with lids is 3 ml. These paint pot strips are lightweight and takes up little space, easy to store and convenient to carry around when going out or traveling.
  • Wide Application This mini paint pots strips can contain a variety of items, such as painting pigments, cosmetics, glitter powder, jewelry beads, powder and so on. These paint pods empty bulk also can be applied to arts and crafts projects, schools, outdoor sketching, art class and art festivals.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases

11. This is not in the video or above, but it is another way. Sorry, I've never bought them so I couldn't speak about them.

Premade cookie palettes. This goes without saying. No cleanup, no mess, fast, easy.

The con about these is you will need to a bit extra on the cost of the sugar cookie order to cover your expense.

PYO cookie palette. Now for the RESULTS...

1. Skittles

Image of the results of using skittles for a PYO cookie palette

2. M &  M's

Image showing the result of using M&Ms for a cookie paint palette

3. Piping and airbrushing royal icing dots

Image showing result of using piped and airbrushed royal icing dots

4. Airbrushing circles on cookies

Image showing the result of using the airbrushed circles on a cookie

5. Painting the piped royal icing dots by hand with a gel mixture

Image showing the result of using food gel painted royal icing dots for a palette

6. Painting the gel mixture right onto the cookie

Image showing the result of painting the gel and vodka right on the cookie for a PYO cookie palette

7. Food color markers

Image showing the result of using food color markers for a PYO cookie palette

8. Using edible ink on cardstock through a Cricut

Image showing the result of using an edible image for a palette

9. Microsoft Word on heavyweight paper or cardstock

Image showing the result using Microsoft Word printing with edible ink on paper

10. Paint pods. Sorry, I forgot to add this in the video and take pictures, but it turns out the very same as the other 2 methods of using the gel mixture.

(Here is a bunch of inspiration for cookie ideas)

Image showing you can use paint pods instead of a cookie palette

Here are the final results, side-by-side.

Image shows all 10 comparisons for the PYO cookie palettes

Keep in mind, that PYO cookies are simply a form of water-coloring since you will be using water. This form, no matter the medium you use, will not be deep and dark colors, though a few of them are darker than others.

UPDATE: I am updating all my pages. As I was going through this page, it dawned on me to use a round or star icing tip and make a swirl with thicker royal icing, like a toothpaste thickness with the colors you want to use for a palette. Let the flooded sugar cookies dry and swirl on the palette. It's done in one fell swoop this way.

I hope this has helped you decide which PYO cookie palette to use.

Top of PYO Cookie Palette