I would like to make a beer bucket cake for my dad for his b-day and I just don't know how to make and color (what colors to use)the bucket. Please if anyone can give me some advice I would greatly appreciate.

you coult make it look like a wooden bucket or make silver. If you do wood, I would cut out planks(I guess thats the term), colored brown, and put some texture into them.

I wanted to do the wood bucket, but when I look at the cakes they have two tones of brown, I wonder if the darker brown is brush sprayed on the brown fondant.

you could use a brown or even a black petal dust or you could use 2 different shades of brown cut them into strips, mush them together them roll it out

Thank you so much the idea of black petal dust sounds awesome, Definitively going for that one. Huge help, I was really stuck on this one. Thank you again. =)

np