Laura Hansen, Maybe you should also try Natural Color Guy's sugar syrup spray suggestion? I'd be really curious to see/hear how that works for you.
Will take a look into that as well. Is there any special recipe Natural Colour Guy?
I see what you mean Julia regarding to the flood icing. I wish we could do it that way, but when we are a whole factory doing this over and over again and it is not always the same person that would be during it, then it is not very easy to put up a consistence that we can't really explain "normal" people in the production whom is not experts or very interested in this icing subject. If you see what I am talking about. I wonder how other people do this?!
I had a shop for 10 years where we did large-scale production, so my decorators started learning with my formulas (ratios of water to "glue") that I gave them. Once they acquired a natural feel for the icing, they were able to work on feel and sight and without the formula. But if counting works for you, then by all means . . .