Sometimes you think you are doing everything right, then in the end, it doesn't turn out as you planned.  I received an order for some Chica the chicken cookies.  I made a set of these in April, so I knew what the cookies entailed.  I had to ship the cookies out, so I did as much of the prep work ahead of time.  I made royal icing eyes, dyed the icing giving it time to darken, and had the cookies cut out in the freezer, ready to bake.  Everything was going fine until I put the royal icing eyes on the wet yellow icing.  The yellow icing bled into the eyes, making the Chica's look like crazy zombies.  The oddest thing was only the right eye had bleeding.  Every right eye looked horrible and all the left eyes were just fine.  I have no idea how or why this happened (maybe humidity?).  Regardless of the cause, I had to figure out a way to fix the eyes.  I decided to add more white icing on top of the royal icing eye to cover up the bleeding.  It solved the problem with the eyes, but the additional black I added around the eyes ended up bleeding into the yellow.  Also, the black pupal was bleeding into the new white eye.  

Things were going down hill fast!  I think that the culprit was the humidity.  During the summer Monsoons in the Southwest, the humidity increases much higher than the rest of the year.  The increase of moisture in the air means the icing takes longer to dry and can bleed into adjacent colors.  I should have allowed the yellow icing to dry fully before adhering the eyes.  Sometimes when making cookies, things don't turn out as planned.  I offered the client a 50% refund for the substandard cookies, hoping they weren't too big of a disappointment.