Holiday Cookie Fiasco!

So, I thought I had this brilliant idea to bake my holiday cards this year.  Well, I gave it a try and it wasn't such a great idea after all.  First off, paying for the edible images seemed to be a bit pricy.  I was thinking about buying my own printer and edible ink, but I wanted to test out my cookie before purchasing everything.

I went to Gloria's Cake Supply and had them print out one sheet of icing paper for me.  It was $10 for one sheet.  I called a million other places, but most bakeries wouldn't print the sheet for me.  They only wanted me to order a cake.  Once I got the sheet printed the pictures didn't look quite as high quality as I was expecting, but I knew I could fix that in my design later.  It was just a matter of adjusting my font and making it bigger.

Edible Icing Sheet

Close shot of the 4x6 picture.

Close shot of the 3x5 picture.

 
I also didn't have a cookie cutter I wanted to use yet, so I had to cut the shapes by hand.  Here are the cookies I cut out and iced with plain white icing.

After these dried over night, I cut out the pictures and applied them to the cookie using a brush and water.  They actually stuck to the cookies pretty easily.

4x6 cookie

Mini Square Cookie

3x5 Cookie

Small Rectangle Cookie

Now it was time to add a border.  Red seemed like the perfect color to me.  I had trouble getting the icing just the right thickness.  I tried and tried and ended up making it waaaaay too thick, but I did manage to get the border out.

I added various borders to the other cookies and a couple of hearts.

4x6 Cookie

Once they were finished I wanted to send at least 2 through the mail to test my packing techniques.  I sent the large 4x6 cookie to my friend Erin and the small 3x5 cookies to my mom.  Both of them ended up cracking.

4x6 Cookie sent to Erin

On top of the cookies cracking it cost $3 a cookie to send it standard mail.  I think I might be able to figure out a way to send them without breakage, but the cost of shipping is a little steep to send out so many holiday cookies.  I have decided to stick with real holiday cards this year!  I will definitely bake some more cookies for this wonderful season, but they won't be my holiday cards.