I don't make decorated cookies very often, but decided tomake some for the little people in my family (neice and nephew) for Halloween. I use royal icing and use it thicker to make the outline for the icing to stay inside of then thin it to do the flood fill. Now here is the problem, You can always see the outline as a distint outline. I get the icing all the way to the edges of the outline, why doesn't it flow together and get rid of that outline? I know I'm doing something wrong and am hoping some of you cookie masters can tell me what. I was going to take a picture to show you the problem but of course ALL the batteries are dead to the digital camera. If I get one charged up here in a little bit I'll upload a picture.
Thanks for your help.
Jeanne
That seems to happen for me too, probably because the outside line crusts so fast. I don't ever outline them any more because of the very way that looks. I find if I just spread on the thinner icing almost to the edge it looks so much nicer. Hope that helps you.
I also just use the thinner consistency for the entire thing.
it does this because the outline is a different consistency. they will look different. if you can i would just use the thinned consistency to the edg and just be extra carefull. HTH 
I use the thinned icing (consistency for flooding) to make the outline, and then fill it in immediately, one cookie at a time. Occasionally if I'm working too slowly or get interrupted the outline will show, but usually it blends with the flooding to make a perfectly smooth surface on the icing.
If you read through Antonia74's tutorial, I think she calls it the "advanced" method, and it has more detail on how to do it this way.
Good luck!
Laura.
I use a medium consistency.......make it like the consistency of pancake batter......and I use those little baby sppoons......you know the plastic ones that you can keep or toss??? Well, I got like 10 for 2 dollars at Walmart and they're perfect for mixing small amounts of icing etc. and they're AWESOME for filling in royal on cookies......I drop a glop of the icing on the center of the cookie and move the spoon in a circular motion slowly moving the icing further out towards the edge of the cookie.........you have a surprising amount of control with these little spoons they work great and you never have an outline.....although sometimes I do still outline when I want to emphasize something but then the outline is in a different color. good luck you'll have to play around and find out what works best for you!
Is it possible that you're not using quite enough of the flood icing to make it come up to the same height as the outline? Just a thought.
I used to do the outline first and then do the filling in afterwards. Firstly I hated the look of the "line" on the outside and secondly it was more time consuming doing it that way. What I do now is to just get a consistency where if I drizzle a bit of the icing into the bowl and count to 10 and the line blends in, then I know it's right to do the whole cookie in one go.
Hope this helps.
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