I have tried to stencil on buttercream without luck! I followed the instructions as in the tutorial on cakecentral but it did not work. I am wondering what went wrong or what I could have done differently! Any ideas??

I love to stencil on buttercream. Number one, you have to have a crusting buttercream. When your buttercream is crusted lay stencil on cake and using a palatte knife smooth the butter cream over the stencil then very carefully lift off stencil. Wash stencil before putting it back on another spot. If stencil will over lap a previoulsy stenciled spot be sure to let the previousl stenciled spot crust. Sometimes I cover the previously stenciled spot with typing paper to prevent smearing. After stenciling has time to crust I sometimes lightly smooth over it with Viva to smooth the edges. I hope this helps. If you want more info pm me.

I have several photos of my stenciled cakes in my photos. Just to name a few- Helping hands, Daughter's wedding cake, Thanksgiving cake, Aloha cake, Christmas poinsettia sheet , Christmas lamp cake, rose tiffany lamp, tulip sheet, Independence Day.

I always had alot of problems stenciling also, so I visited the Designer Stencils booth and they gave a lesson.

The biggest thing to know is to:
* Have your buttercream crusted
* Use a slightly thinner coating for the stencil (whether you use buttercream or royal icing)
* Apply thinned icing in ONE direction
* Hold down stencil with one hand and lift the other to remove

My biggest problem was always smearing the stencil, but once I started holding down one side, they became PERFECT.

HTH

You can use a meringue buttercream, but it needs to be cold on the cake so that it won't smear when you put the stencil against it. Here's a blog entry I did about this recently: http://acaketorememberva.blogspot.com/2011/07/stencilling-on-buttercream.html