I am working on a 2 tiered birthday cake for my son and neice who will be turning 1. they are having a joint birthday party on sunday. i had a beautiful cake planned out but i am having so many issues with the fondant. its just not going to work. i can't get good fondant in time to be able to get everything ready.
i'm so frustrated i have put so much time and effort and ingredients into trying to make it work with the fondant but it just does not look like its going to work.
the cakes are already filled and ready to be iced. they are 8 inch and 6 inch. any ideas of a nice cake i can do in buttercream? i am totally stumped here
please help.

What were you originally planning to do on the cake (with the fondant?) Perhaps we can help come up with a suitable substitute using the buttercream.

what were you going to do? need more info to help

Do you have a theme? Did you buy special napkins with a character? Are they stacked?? You can use your fondant to make shapes, stripes, etc. Use your cookie cutters and then just plac on the cake. The BC will hold them. I'm sure someone else will have other ideas for you.

no theme. so anything that will look good.
was going to do fondant stripes on bottom tier. fondant dots on top with bow and fondant one for topper. fondant is not working at all so i have to do whole cake w/o fondant

Polka dots are pretty easy with buttercream and you can smooth them with the viva paper towel if you prefer them flat. Stripes are hard in buttercream so you might do something wavy so it's intentionally not perfect.

Were you using homemade fondant? I have personally not had very much luck with that. If you want to do fondant accents grab a Michael's coupon and buy the wilton fondant. It taste ick but if it's just for accents people won't eat it anyway.

is the wilton stuff easy to use and use to color? i usually use satin ice and its so easy to work with. i dont have any more patience to work with something that is not easy to work with.

If you can't get your hands on fondant or want to make it. You could get some of those fruit roll-up strips...like fruit by the foot type stuff and use that for the border, you could probably also cut small circles from it and make matching polka dots.

I did a two sided cake once, in buttercream. It's in my photos, one side for my nephew, one side for my daugher. They both loved the cake, and it was pretty easy to do. Good luck to you : )

Wilton is super easy to work with it just doesn't taste good I like the fruit rollups idea as well.

what about gum paste or RI?

buttercream stripes aren't bad if you use the basketweave tip and flip it over so that the flat side is up. Add a little corn syrup to your buttercream and it will give it more elasticity and you should be able to pipe and have the flat stripe of bc come out and let it gently fall onto the cake in a straight line..........doing the stripes on the side of the cake is easier.......just squeeze some out so that the icing is secured at the top edge of the cake and pipe and pull your tip out and then reconnect the icing at the bottom in a straight line.
If you're afraid of not getting them perfectly straight, mark your top and bottom with a toothpick (just poke a little indentation) to use as a guide of where to start and stop your stripes. That design can definitely be done in all bc.

Here is a cake I did in literally 2 minutes using bc to make stripes.....it can be done.
I used a #7 round tip though, because that was the look I was going for.

KHalstead.....Thanks for the info about the corn syrup in the buttercream. I am doing a spiderman cake and was a little anxious about the the lines

what is wrong with the fondant? too dry? too moist? is it mmf? store bought?

I would suggest you use bright colors and go a little whimsical. Kids love it. If you are looking for color combinations , look at your kids toys. Just do each tier a color with contrasting decorations all over. Be creative and fun!

Try orange with purple curlycues and green with pink polka-dots. Tie it all in with yellow edge piping. Get those long skinny candles and place them at angles.

These kinds of cakes are bright and attractive to kids. The simple bold graphics work well for them too. Think Dr. Suess.

If you made your own fondant and you're having trouble with it, you can knead it in with some Wilton (at least 1/2 Wilton) and it will probably work very well and taste great.

HTH
Rae