I made a beautiful cake last weekend...by the time I got it to work it looked awful! I did blue (Tiffany blue) "base" icing with white for the borders, etc., or so I thought. The next day, all still looked good, although it appeared that the blue icing was bleeding into the white "beads" I did for the bottom border. By the end of the day, all of the lettering and fine detail work was as blue as the base icing!! Is there any way to avoid this?

What kind of icing did you use? I had that happen when I made a diabetic cream cheese icing. But it doesn't happen to me if I use an icing that crusts.

I had this happen too. I used chocolate icing and the colors on top turned nice and brown. You couldn't even tell they were there unless you looked really hard.

I used the Wilton "Class Buttercream" which is all shortening and no butter (just butter flavor). I noticed on my Mardi Gras cake that the next day the colors were bleeding into the white "base" frosting as well. I guess the trick is not to ice the cake a day early!!