X'mas Sugar Cookies

Here is my 2nd sugar cookies icing attempt. If you remember my 1st attempt, the royal icing was a royal mess. However this time around, it was definitely better.  I am confident that the next time will be perfect. I think I'll add some corn syrup to the icing - it's supposed to give it a nice sheen rather than a matte when it dries.  I am just a beginner, but I had so much fun making these.  Here they are, all baked and iced:

I used the "wet on wet" icing technique a lot. I like how the colors dry smooth, and somehow looks more professional to me. For example, with the white star and red polka dots in the above picture, I iced the entire cookie with the white, and while it is still wet, I added the 5 small red dots.  The dots will get bigger by itself so be sure to make the dots smaller than what you like, and they will be the perfect size when it dries. And I used tip #3 for everything. Another cookie with the same technique is the top part of the Christmas stocking in the above picture.  I outlined it in white, then filled in with green, and added small random dots of red while the green was still wet.  Then I used a toothpick and swirled it around. It made a cool pattern.  

Speaking of toothpicks, I used them on every cookie, to help the icing fill out into small areas. It it too hard to pick out my favorite cookie...I like that each is one is different, and I love them all. 

I purchased these cupcake to-go boxes a long time ago from an online warehouse place.  I thought they would come in handy one day, since I used to make a lot of cupcakes and such:

Anyways, I put the cookies in the containers and decided they were missing something...and needed an extra boost...like glitter!  So the cookies came back out. I hustled my way to Michael's and got some pearl dust (edible glitter) and new, clean paint brushes.  I dry "painted" the pearl dust right on top on the dried icing. It made each cookie so much prettier. Sorry for the bad picture here:

Shimmery and much prettier:

The set of paintbrushes was about $5, and the Wilton's pearl dust was $4 a jar (in white and gold). It looks like this:

Now they sparkle! Such a little thing that makes a big difference, at least to me. You can see here that on the candy cane, I only put the pearl dust on the red parts:

Kind of hard to see in this picture, but believe me, they are all glittered up: