Cookie Souvenirs

I try to make my gift giving as personalized as possible and I don't think it could be any more pleasing to get one's message across than through personalized cookies. These are made using sweet tart pastries that don't spread nor puff up a lot, an indispensable characteristic to achieving a writable surface. The cookie surface is usually painted with royal icing first to make it look neater and more clear cut; it is then left to dry up before writing on messages and designs.
The only problem I encountered in making the cut outs is in making sure that the rolled out dough does not get too warm because it will be impossible to cut out neat shapes. It needed a lot of chilling in between rolling and cutting outs.
At first I thought they were very tedious to make, but I discovered it really isn't so. The key is dividing the task among several days-- baking the cookies on day 1, painting on day 2 and so on. The actualy work is relatively minimal with more waiting to do than anything.