This Hello Kitty was made by a very fun, if time consuming, process of flooding. She is a hard but fragile thin piece of sugar. I made it by printing out the picture of her and taping in to the counter. I then placed a piece of parchment over the image and piped the outline with thick royal icing. I let this dry completely then painted all the lines with black food color mixed with a little vodka to thin it. When that was dry, I thinned down the royal icing with some water until it was of a pouring consistency. I filled in all the white bits and then colored some of the icing for the colored work. The whole thing must dry for several hours and when completely hardened, the parchment is peeled off and the sugar decal can be used for cakes.
The advantage of this process is that highly complicated designs can be made weeks in advance and stored until needed. It's a lot of fun, but laborious.
