I would like to make some heart cookie cut outs covered in gold fondant for valentines day. However I have never used the colour. I see that I can use airbrush colours to achieve this look but I do not have an airbrush. I have read that I can paint it on but this may be very time consuming and leave brush strokes. Is it possible to knead the airbrush colour into the fondant? If that's not possible how do I go about painting the gold on? Should I do it when the fondant is on the cookie or when its rolled out before I cut? Before I emboss the cookie with lettering or after? Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

Paint it on after the fondant is on the cookie and embossed.

You can't knead it in...well, you could, but it would just disappear and make your fondant sticky.

It's really easy to paint gold or silver into embossed fondant. Easier than trying to do a design without lines to follow. I use a script liner paintbrush. If you go outside your design, just use a tiny scrap of paper towel to wipe off the excess.

Thank you so much for your reply. A few more questions if you don't mind... how long approx will it take to dry? Do I need to use any alcohol to when I paint it on and.... Will I be able to glue some fondant flowers and pearls to this? Thank you

Bump bump

When I do gold or silver I generally sponge paint it on. If i'm doing silver, make it grey fondant, if gold then yellow. Take silver or gold luster dust and mix in high proof clear alcohol or lemon extract and sponge that on over the fondant, no brush strokes that way and it goes on nice and evenly. I would say it dries within 20 minutes, but it depends on the alcohol content of your "paint" .I sometimes brush straight dust on if after if is fully dried for a little more glitz, but it's not really necessary. Good luck!

If you're using airbrush color, you don't need to add alcohol...It will dry in about an hour unless the paint is super-thick. You can mix luster dust and alcohol and paint that way. (The Wilton dusts don't give good results for silver and gold unless you're putting them on gray or yellow fondant)

You can glue things to the cookies, sure. I usually use tylose and water for that, a very small amount.

If you want to be able to do the cookies quickly, make your fondant cutouts before you bake the cookies (I put them on sheets of waxed paper dusted with cornstarch and let them dry a little while so they don't stretch when I put them on the cookie) and place them on the cookies as soon as they come out of the oven. Then tranfer them carefully to a cooling grid. The heat from the cookie will bond the fondant to the cookie. If you're adding impressions, or embossing it, do that about half an hour after the cookies come out of the oven. Wait too long, the fondant will harden. In an hour, you can stack the cookies (as long as they don't have wet paint at that point) or bag them without making the fondant look messy.