Not my gumdrop buttons!

Do you know the muffin man?
The muffin man?
The muffin man!
Yes I know the muffin man, who lives down on Drury lane.
 
Do a Google Images search for gingerbread men.  Now google gingerbread man decorating. Now try for Gingerbread men professionally decorated. Now can anyone tell me why they all look so bad? Is it some kind of tradition to decorate gingerbread men terribly? I dont understand? I was looking for ideas, suffice to say I didnt get any there.  Although I did find plenty of cartoon images of the Shrek Gingerbread Man, so thats what I went with.

                                                     my inspiration

I followed the recipe from http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/recipes/gingerbread-men/62806
Great recipe, super easy and delicious, then prepared the icing.  One egg white and around a cup of icing sugar.  It depends heavily on how large the egg was, so just keep adding icing sugar until the consistency is that of, well, icing.  How else do I describe it.  Sour cream consistency?  Separate into three and colour, I just used liquid food colouring, but if you need to add a lot of that to get your colour you may end up having to add a little more icing sugar.  Put the coloured icing into little piping bags, or if you cant make/dont have little piping bags then use snaplock lunch bags and you can snip a tiny corner off for piping.

 Then get to work.

 Build your army, then allow to dry for half a day or at least a few hours.

 I borrowed a cookie cutter that imprinted the buttons, eyes and mouth making it much easier to make them all the same!