I am making a cake for a lady that wants a pink and black zebra print cake but no fondant. I was thinking of painting on a crusting buttercream frosting, but not sure if it is possible. Any ideas or tips!? please help!

You can pipe the zebra stripes on in buttercream. I did it (in my gallery) and it is very easy...unless you want to paint..then just make sure your cake is cold and use airbrush colors. You can also suggest that she just peel off the fondant stripes...or flavor your fondant and tell her you have flavored it. Good luck!

I painted the skate board cake in my photos. It is done in crusting buttercream and airbrush paints.

As far as the regular color gels, some use them straight, some add vanilla or lemon extract to them, others add vodka or everclear to it.

Yes, you can paint on buttercream with coloring gels. Thin with water, vodka, or lemon extract. If you thin with alcohol, it goes on more evenly and dries faster. If you thin with water, you can do blended/varied 'watercolor' effects and have more time to mess with it before it dries (sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing ).

I think it would be hard to use them straight -- they'd be way too dark.

Or you could do the stripes with rolled buttercream.

Come to think of it, using straight gel color might be a good idea when you want black!

thanks for all the info! I will see what happens!