All buttercream. My daughter loves Dora, horses and rainbows so I combined the three for her cake. I confess I "cheated" by drawing the picture in pencil on a piece of paper, scanned that to my computer, printed an edible image of the drawing and placed it on the cake, then traced the drawing with black icing and filled in with assorted colors using the star tip. I didn't want t draw directly on the cake and risk messing it up.