I'm doing two two-tier wedding cakes next weekend. The mother of the bride--a friend of mine--is a wonderful artist who is going to hand paint some flowers on both cakes. She's going to start in the middle of the second tier (8-in), and paint large poppies and the like that cover where the cakes meet and go onto the bottom tier. She wants a black ribbon around the base of each cake, and her idea was just to cut it off around the flowers, but I'm thinking this will look strange, since the flowers have no depth. I though about doing some small piping at the base instead, but I guess it's the same problem. What do you think?

I vote for no border at all, not icing, not ribbon, nothing.

Well, the thing is, with beautiful hand painting, a ribbon will look off. It's a mix of mediums that wouldn't fly with this decorator. Actually I don't use ribbon at all anymore, it's fondant or nothing. What would look great, is try to get those borders as perfect as possible (spend twice as much time on this part if necessary), and pipe a very very even snail tral border, that gets smaller and smaller towards the flowers, eventually stopping where they start, and pick back up where they begin of course. You don't want anything to compete with the flowers. Only compliment them. And a ribbon ain't gonna compliment it.

Snail trail...sorry. Here. like this: http://www.sifbeth.dk/x/lambethtut5.jpg but smaller, and NOT with a shell tip, just a round tip.

I think that the ribbon border wouldn't necessarily look bad with the painted flowers, but the flowers have to be laid out in such a way that it makes sense. And instead of interrupting the border, the painted flowers should emerge from or cross under the border.

Just some examples for inspiration:

http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2166514
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2027273
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/2108923
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1670097

Holly