Royal Icing Education

I have never worked with Royal Icing before. I always see the fancy little cookies and delights made with Royal Icing but have never made them myself. I decided to make my friend Joy some cookies to brighten her week. I went to Zurcher's twice for supplies. The first visit was to pick up a giant flower cookie cutter. I had to return yesterday to pick up a can of Meringue Powder. I was all set with my tinting gels, decorator bags, tips etc. I baked a big batch of sugar cookies and was feeling pretty confident. This is about where I fumbled. I filled one bag with white icing and a # 3 tip. Since I only had one # 3 tip my only other option was my # 12 tip for the second bag. The instructions said to pipe the outline and fill the coloring immediately. This did not allow me to move the tip from one bag to another. As I piped my first cookie I filled it in and "uh oh" the # 12 really added a TON of frosting to the cookie. I worked through several more thinking it was nice because I could fill them so fast but instead of the smooth cookies in the picture mine were loaded with royal icing and way too much of it. I finished about 1/2 and then tossed the icing because I was not happy with the results. I figured the kids at church would not notice so I took them to coffee hour this morning. I ran back by Zurcher's after church and to my horror found that they are closed on Sundays. I didn't want to drive across town so I ran over to Wal-Mart (a store I do not like) and was so thankful to find some tips. Now I have another # 3 and a # 5 tip. I am going to start all over again and see if I can get this right. This is a labor of love for Joy because if it was anyone else I would not do a complete do-over to get these darn cookies to be as pretty as possible. Back to the kitchen for me. Wish me luck!