I racking my brain on this. I want to stack up cupcakes so they look like a two tiered, stacked cake. I just can't quite figure out how to do it without getting the bottom of the top tier all messy with frosting.

My only idea is to use a circle of craft foam in the middle of my board. Then maybe line up cupcakes around the foam for the bottom "tier" and stack cupcakes on top of the foam as the second tier? And how do I secure them? Royal? I thought about using skewers (as is done with cupcake bouquets) but my cupcakes are filled and I'd rather not have filling oozing out the bottoms.

You guys are brilliant - I'm betting you've got a thousand ideas that didn't cross my mind.... Lay 'em on me!

I like your idea! Especially if you do not need the cupcakes to be in the center.

The only thing I can come up with (and I'm not even sure if it's 100% do-able) is to stack it more or less like a regular cake. Use a foamcore board as your board between the tiers of cupcakes and use dowels or straws to support it. I would also use a foamcore board as the base for both tiers as well. You could either dowel thru the cupcakes themselves and then into the base board or you could find some space between the cupcakes and put the dowels thru there.

Or, if you use fondant on top of the cupcakes you will not have to worry about the frosting messing up the bottom of the upper tiers.

I just found this site and it has some pics of some cool ways to stack cc! My fav is the modern square looking one (the one with the brown paper with the green ribbon around it).

I hope it helps you, here's the link:

http://megansgettingmarried.blogspot.com/2008/05/wedding-cupcakes-good-bad-yummy.html

I think this one is more like the idea you had (maybe not the shape but the general idea anyway).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62101701@N00/2445100709

I've seen this done with three sizes of cupcakes. Here I'm assuming that you can see the cupcake liners, and you're not trying to make it look like a perfect mini cake. The 3 cupcakes were simply iced as normal, stacked on top of one another and then supported by a thick straight piece of uncooked pasta rather than a straw or dowel. You can just break off the pasta to the height you need.
The pasta trick may work for a fancier version too.