?(s) for frequent cookie decorators

Depends on the detail .....

For example:
I did 100 dog bone shaped cookies (bride and groom were dog lovers). About 2.5" long and 1" wide. One color. Flooded in less than an hour plus another hour to bag-n-tag.

50 Hello Kitty cookies. About 4x5" (this is a big honkin' cookie!). Only about 3 colors but the bulk of the work was the flooding. Took me five ... yes FIVE!! ... freakin' hours!!! Just to decorate! No bagging. They were bulk packed.

So I say it just depends on the detail.

I strongly recommend assembly line decorating.

I offered my experiences with the cookies I've made just to give examples of how detail and size can make a difference. I didn't realize you were looking for exact times on an exact cookie. My apology for not understanding your request.

I made baby bottle cookies for my daughter's baby shower. Made 50 of them and it took me and one other person about 30 minutes. Assembly line decorating. I did the big bottle part flooding, she did the nipple, then we both filled in the screw-on part (between the nipple and the bottle).

I can relate. A few months ago i needed to make 150 wedding themed cookies. (wedding cake, engagement ring, double hearts, single hearts, shell). It's so much harder to do 150 different cookies than just doing 150 of the same kind.
The first thing i'd suggest is to bake all the shapes at one time so you have them ready. The fastest decorating technique i can think of is to flood them all in white and then use all the colors you mentioned above to detail. Or use fondant for quick decorating.

I thought Indy was beaing "clear" on giving example times for example cookies.

If you're not a "regular" cookie decorator I would give yourself at least 15-20 min. time allotment per cookie. So you're talking upwards of 65 hrs. total! That is just decorating!

Here is a link to Christmas cookies that I did. I do not decorate cookies frequently so I am kind of slow. I think these had a little more detail than you are talking about so you can shave some time off but it took me three hours to do 30 cookies (I'm seriously slow ). So 200 cookies without as much detail would probably take me 12 hours. Hope that is helpful!
http://cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1529040

The way I do mine is definately a one person assembly line. Bake them all one day and stack them in tins after they've cooled. Next day I start the first layer of flooding. During the month of december, i had 64 dozen cookies to do and the quickest way I found to do them Is to do as much as one color as you can before moving onto the next color. meaning, I had trees, dresses, themed shaped cookies, that all needed green flooding so i did all those then moved onto the next stack of cookies that needed a different color flooding. then after a few hours, could go back and do all the decorations on top of the flooding.
here's a link to the page of some of the ones I did in Dec.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alycakes/page2/
the rest of them are on the next page.

I could flood a dozen in just under an hour. most of my cookies are 4". The decoration part of them took about 20 to 30 min per dozen. some less time just depending on the details.

here's one of my techniques don't know if anyone else uses them. I found it a pain to have one color with two different consistancies, one for outlining the flooding area and one for flooding. saw that on here somewhere when i started cookies. I make a medium flooding consistancy, outline what i'm flooding and use a paint brush to "pull in" the icing to the middle. just keep it in a little cup of water. just make sure that you don't add too much water with your brush or you'll get white streaks on them. for round cookies, a spoon works great.

hope this helps.
Aimee

nah, I do them pretty quickly..........like indy said I do them assembly line fashion.......flood one, flood two, etc. go back pipe 1 color of details one one, then the next, etc. each cookie is done step by step. Generally I'll make 1 cookie start to finish (that one always takes the longest because I'm swapping bags of colors, etc.) so that I have an example to refer to as I decorate each individual step on the rest!

Depending on how much piping is involved (with this many different colors, it will obviously take longer.........I limit mine to 3 colors, after that the price goes up because it can be a pain, not to mention all the extra dirty bowls/spoons, etc. it causes) I usually give myself around 5 min. total for each cookie. So that mean I should be able to flood in a min. and pipe 3 different colors in 4 minutes tops! Even then 200 cookies would take 1,000 minutes which is nearly 17 hrs. This doesn't count having to refill your icing bag, stop and stretch your back, get a drink, and all the other things I do while decorating lol

I can tell you though, the first couple orders of cookies I did I think I spent at least 30 min. on each cookie and that doesn't count bagging them.........you don't even wanna know how LONG that took!!