Hi everyone!
My sister has asked me to make round sugar cookies that look like a soccer ball. She wants "hard" icing so that we can put each cookie in a baggie and add curling ribbon to give out as a gift.
Should I use crusting buttercream or do you think it would work to use black and white candy melts. Or maybe you have an even better suggestion.. 
Thanks for any and all suggestions. I have to tackle these tomorrow so wish me luck.
Treena
I was also going to suggest RI as it dries hard and you can cover the cookie in white then add the black detail when the white has dried. and it will all dry hard.
There is an impression mat available for a soccer ball (comes with lots of other impressions and cutters too. So easy to use with fondant! Roll out fondant, impress with the soccer imprint, then use same round cutter used for the cookie to cut out the impression. Place the impressed fondant onto the cookie that has been iced or brushed with piping gel. The appropriate sections may be colored with a black food pen. Note: Crusted buttercream may also be impressed if not wanting to do fondant, but may more easily get smashed in a bag. The mats may be found here:
http://www.countrykitchensa.com/whatshot/cookie_cutter_texture_sheets.aspx
I found complete instructions here for the fondant soccer ball:
http://www.countrykitchensa.com/catalog/product.aspx?T=3&ShopId=44&CatId=603&SubCatId=314&productId=636152
Thank you again for all of the helpful suggestions. I have never used RI but I will be trying it tomorrow.
I love your suggestion cakecookie6; but I need these by Monday.
One more question......won't the cookies get hard while you let them set out for the 6+ hours for the icing to harden?
Thanks again! 
I did soccer balls and they were tricky at first, but pretty easy once I figured it out. I used my Cricut to make the soccer ball templet, but it still wasn't the right style so
I took a soccer ball clip art I liked printed it a few times until it was the general size of the round cutter I was using. Used NFSC recipe so my cookies didn't change shape.
Then I laminated the print out so it wouldn't soak up butter from the cookie (you can do this with tape) and cut out the black spaces with an exacto knife.
Then put the templet on the baked cookie, traced all of the empty spaces on with a food marker and when I took it off I had a perfect outline of where to fill in.
I used black and white glace icing (it dries hard, but is soft and yummy when you bite into it), outlined, then filled in the black spaces as marked, once you do that you can see where to draw the other black lines, let it dry some, went back and did the white, they came out great. And no your cookies don't get stale while they are out drying, I leave mine out overnight before bagging to ensure they are dry. Good luck!!
I believe Karens Cookies has a complete instruction on how to do them. When i made mine i used my projecter and a soccer ball clipart to project the image on the cookie. I iced them in royal icing.
I've done them in candy melts also...Outline the ball in black and fill in the hexagons with black (you can add a little americolor black to the dark choc candy melts, if you add paramount crystals to the choc.) Another option with the choc: if you don't want to color your chocolate black (it tends to seize up if you don't use paramount crystals) you could do it in dark choc, then use black sanding sugar on the wet choc.
In terms of the pattern: if you think of it in terms of black pentagons (5 sides), and the white are hexagons (6 sides)...and I would recommend doing them off centered...if you do the first black pentagon dead center on the cookie, it comes out looking like a flower...the above example is the way I like to do it!
Good luck!!!
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