Hi Dawn!! When I did mine...I arranged the cupcakes then frosted over the top. Here is Dawn's (cali4dawn) tutorial for a cupcake cake that helped me a lot when I did my first one.
http://community.webshots.com/photo/105830324/1192813746051689275ZzeIFp
Hope that helps, ~Denise
Cali4dawn has a tutorial on her homepage & there is one on nuvox.net also. It's pretty simple. Just arrange your cupcakes in the shape you want. You might want to "glue" them to cakeboard using frosting. Then frost the whole thing. The easiest way is to use the Wilton icing tip. Pipe your border on and decorate however you want. I did my first one recently. It was so easy and great for kids. I used my tupperware carrier that has a cupcake holder and didn't have to glue them down. It transported well. Here's a pic.
Well...the hardest part is deciding on how you want to arrange them, lol!
It's very easy! I put a dot of bc under mine to hold them in place. You can use the wilton icer tip, but I was in a hurry and just iced with a spatula....didn't have time to go looking for that tip, lol.
They're very easy!
Good Luck to you!!
I have a tip....Or rather something that I prefer to do....
Something that I do instead of put icing on the bottom (because It can get kind of messy...) is.....
When you bake your cupcakes, bake them in two baking cups. Then, Hot glue the entire cupcake down on your cake board once you have them all arranged.
When you serve them, just remove the cupcake from the second paper cup. The second baking cup acts as a holder and really keeps them in place nicely.
Does that make sense>> Sorry... im really bad at explaining myself! 
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