I've got to make and 80's theme tiered cake for a birthday party this weekend. The client wants to top layer to have a paint splatter effect. Any ideas of what type of icing would do this well. I was hoping to actually really splatter it from a brush, not just try to duplicate the looking with piping. It's going on a base of crusting cream cheese frosting.

Any ideas?

maybe bright colored piping gel, does she want it to look like small splatters like when i paint lol and it spatters all over the drop cloths, you could use a tooth brush and point down da, an run your thumb kind of hard on the colored brush, that's is how i do it with my acrylic paints, you might want to go to the dollar store. get a firm brush, not soft hope this helps and i'll give you a bump

Have an old toothbrush laying around? 1st soak it inb alchol, let dry then use a drop of liquid food coloring (paste jel probably would work too) and turn it upsidce down and run your finger over the bristles. Coat your finger w/Crisco or wear a glove.

I did it recently, but on fondant (see my tiara cake)...I don't know why it wouldn't work on a crusting type frosting....but I just used a paintbrush with some gelcolor thinned out with vodka and just splattered it over the cake...I did have to cover my entire table in newspaper first....

I made drippy snow with thinned royal icing (like for flooding). Is this the effect you might be looking for?

i guess that's more cartoony and not realistic. oh well, an idea if you decide to go that way.

I used to do this all the time with airbrush color. Just drop little droplets on the icing, then "blow" it around with the airbrush stream. Just make sure the colors will be complimentary so when they blend they don't make brown or grey- like pink, yellow and orange, or blue and green.
I think we had to do this in kindergarten, that's where i got it. Good luck!

dmo4ab - I think fondant or a crusting buttercream would both hold a light splattering very well, obviously fondant would hold it more! A thin RI or vodka with gel color will probably be your best bet for splattering! GL!

I did this for a 16th Birthday just last week!

I Just thinned buttercream to very runny consistency, then took a paint brush that had a big head(an artists brush, but I think a regular one would work too!) and flicked it toward the cake. Going in different directions around and on top of the cake!

I also wanted to write on the top of the cake, so I cut a piece of waxed paper into an oval and centered it on the cake top. Once I was done splattering , just picked up the paper and finished the cake.

I put waxed paper under the board to catch what didn't land on the cake. I just did one color at a time. I used pink, blue, green and yellow colors. It really looked cool! They were extremely happy with it too!

Thanks everyone. I went with the thinned RI and toothbrush method. It worked pretty good. Check out the pics. It was also my first time working much with MMF for some deco on the bottom layer.

have a pic of your cake...I got a request to do one July 20th..would like to see a pic of it, thank you

I haven't tried the splatter paint method yet but will do it this week. For my daughter's wedding cake I mixed cornstarch with a little water to the consistency I wanted and then added black cake color. I then painted on the design and it worked great. I will use the cornstarch mix again for the splatter and it should work. Here is a picture of the cake I painted.