Mural project making mindfulness sparkle

An edible art installation at the Pine Rivers Heritage Museum is fuelling creativity and teaching people about mindfulness.

The brainchild of mental health advocate, mindful baker and former Zumbo’s Just Desserts contestant Pearly Sprinkles, the Cookie Mural is being built using sugar biscuits decorated by visitors to the museum.

“This mural encourages the public to decorate cookies with edible pens - unleashing creativity, uniting the community, and promoting the positive effects of mindful cookie decorating for mental health,” Pearly explains.

“I create plain, white canvas cookies and we use great little pens with edible ink and let the kids go wild and let their imaginations take them places.

“It’s a mindful activity and they get to eat some of their cookies at the end of it.”

Fun for everyone

Pearly says the cookie decorating is for adults and children, who can choose to add their creation to the mural, eat it or take it home, with most people making multiple designs each visit.

“Pretty much everybody who comes through creates at least one cookie for the wall,” she says.

“It’s like finger-painting – it’s lovely and it fosters creativity and human interaction.”

The installation is free, with materials supplied by Pearly and the Pine Rivers Heritage Museum.

“It’s really nice because the heritage museum sits in Old Petrie Town,” Pearly says.

“People can come in and there’s lots of heritage things from the Moreton Bay Region and the cookie mural brings a little bit of modern to the mix.”

Visitors can take a slice of baking history home with a copy of a sugar cookie recipe from 1937.

Pearly will be holding two free workshops this month – on June 11 and 18 from 11am-noon.

You can visit the museum at Old Petrie Town to decorate cookies Wednesday-Sunday, 10am-3pm until July 7.

Find out more here.