Hi!
I have to make Thomas the Train cupcakes soon. Does anyone know where I can find a template for his face? Also since it's for a 2 year olds birthday, do you think I should make a blue fondant circle and make fondant pieces for his face in grey, etc.. on top of the blue OR should I make the frosting the sky blue color and then make his face in fondant and place it on top of the frosting?
I also need to get grey coloring--the gel paste and I can't find it anywhere..I tried to google it, but I still can't find it. How do I get grey? I heard of doing black with white, but I'm new to fondant and have not used it often enough to go experimenting with colors, that I rather just get the actual color and buy it to color the fondant.
Thanks,
Tiffany
If it were me I'd do the background in buttercream. I think the kids would like that better. I'd do his face in fondant though. I just googled Thomas the Train cupcakes and found this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/jellycakes/galleries/72157624175454840/#photo_3473115577 Those are all very cute ideas.
You don't need a template, just eyeball it. He's got pretty simple features. To make grey fondant just add black coloring to white fondant. The same way you would add black to white buttercream to make it grey.
great, thank you@!! I was thinking that also as far as doing the frosting the blue color piped on and then just his face in fondant since hte kids might like it better when they eat it.
I never worked with color fondant with black before, so I guess just a little wil turn it grey your saying....hopefully it works ok. thank you!
When coloring fondant, always start with a teeny tiny bit. You can always add more color - but if you make a color too dark, you have to add more white fondant. And it often takes A LOT of white fondant. Just a teeny tiny bit of black will make grey fondant. I prefer Americolor gel coloring because they come in a squeeze bottle and are a lot stronger than Wilton. If you have a hobby lobby near you - they sell americolor.
Good luck!
AH! No joke, I JUST finished making fondant toppers in a Thomas theme...weird!
For Thomas' face, I cut out a blue fondant circle and then a smaller grey one for his face. I balled up tiny grey circles and then flattened them for his cheeks, then a grey oblong shape for his nose and smushed it on. I was having trouble getting my fondant grey (it kept turning lavender), but I went on CC and found out that if you add a little yellow (yeah, yellow), it turns the lavender to grey. It worked! So...if that happens...do that. 
I used a small round pastry tip to cut out white circles for his eyes, and used a straw to cut black circles for his pupils (I also made 2 cuts to get his pupil shape--like Pacman). Thennnn I cut out tiny black triangle eyebrows (though it might be a lot easier to just use an edible marker for his pupils and eyebrows--I didn't have one). I also made his little chimney thing on top of his head by cutting a rounded-top rectangle. His mouth was white fondant cut with an oval cutter, then cut longways in half. He was a a bit of a pain to make. I took a picture of my finished toppers (not on cupcakes yet), I'll try to post it so this makes more sense.
I got the idea for these here: http://www.thecupcakeblog.com/tag/chocolate-thomas-the-train-cupcakes/
The plan is to pipe low swirls of buttercream on each cupcake, then sit the topper on (kinda like in the photo below). That way, kids can easily pull off the fondant and just eat the buttercream. However, I may have made my R/R and Thomas circles too large for people to be able to see the buttercream underneath. Oh well. For the railroad tracks, I'm going to pipe green buttercream "grass" above and below the tracks.
Hope that helps/gives you inspiration! 
PS. What's wrong with me? I can never post photos in the forum. I changed the size so that it was under 2MB...grrrr. Anyway, I posted a photo in my photos if you want to look. They aren't as perfect as the toppers in the blog, but they used a printer for his face.
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