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Cake Painting Tutorial – How to Paint on a Cake

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This cake painting tutorial will teach you everything you need to know about painting on fondant cakes. From what edible paint to use, how to trace any design onto a cake, right through to tips on keeping your hands steady and outlining your design for extra pop!

A tall cake covered in light blue fondant and hand painted with a boho feather and ribbon design.

Have you ever looked at a beautifully painted cake and thought, I could never do that? Well, I’m here to tell you—you absolutely can! Painting on fondant is easier than you might think, and it’s a wonderful way to add a personal, artistic touch to your cakes.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you step-by-step how to paint on cakes, with all of my favourite cake painting tips. From choosing the right paints and tools to tracing a design and painting on fondant. No fine arts degree required!

This technique allows you to hand paint any design you like in any colours you choose, so you can customise your painted cakes to match any theme or colour scheme.

The example I’m going to give you is for this boho-style painted cake design that I created for my niece’s birthday, but you can use this cake painting technique to paint any design you want onto your cake!

A close up of the painted cake design - boho-style feathers in shades of pink and peach, with painted ribbons and beads in pastel shades of green, blue, pink and yellow, all outlined in black.

Looks fancy, right? But once you break it down, it’s actually not. I purchased this design, traced it onto the cake, and then it was basically paint-by-numbers.

If you’re great at drawing, you can use your own design, and if, like me, you’re better suited to simply tracing a printed-out design, you can do that too. 

And if you want to paint on cookies instead of a cake, I have a Painting on Cookies tutorial, too.

Ok cool, let’s get started!

What is the Best Edible Paint for Fondant?

I’ve used a bunch of different edible paints and also made my own, but by far my favourite edible paint for cakes is the Sweet Sticks Edible Art paints.

They’re glaze-based paints, which means that they dry completely and once they have dried, they won’t rub off. In my humble opinion, they’re the best paint for fondant cakes.

Bottles of Sweet Sticks Edible Art Paint arranged in a heart shape on a mint green background.

Before these were available on the market, I used to make my own glaze paint using confectioner’s glaze and powdered colouring and that’s a great option if you can’t get your hands on the Sweet Sticks paint. But these days, I very rarely make it myself. The ready-made paints are just so convenient.

One very important tip for using these paints: make sure you give them a good stir with a toothpick, and then shake them well before you use them. The colour tends to settle on the bottom of the bottle and isn’t always incorporated back in if you only give it a shake, and then the paint seems thin and lacks colour punch. This is especially important for metallic colours, but I do it for all of the matte colours now too.

It’s also important to make sure you have some high-strength alcohol on hand for thinning down the paint and for clean up afterwards (more about that below).

There are other brands that make glaze-based paints, such as Sugarflair and Squires Kitchen, so see what is available where you live.

Other options for painting fondant include using powder colouring or gel food colouring mixed with vodka. I find those ok for doing small details on cakes, but I don’t recommend them for large and detailed designs like these.

Powder colour + vodka (or other alcohol) tends to rub off if you touch it once it’s dry, and gel colouring + vodka tends to stay slightly tacky. If you try to do a second coat or outline your design in black, then you’re likely to end up with messy streaks.

There are other water-based and alcohol-based paints on the market. I haven’t tested any of those so I’m not making recommendations, but if you’re choosing a different paint, try to find one that says it is smudge-proof.

cake Painting Tools and Equipment

Other than the paints, here’s what you’ll need for painting on a cake… 

  • Paper and a pencil,
  • Scissors or craft knife, ruler & cutting board
  • Sellotape
  • A paint palette or other container to put your paint into while you work
  • Cake decorator’s alcohol (95% alcohol) or other high-strength alcohol such as Everclear – this is used to thin the paint. I like to use isopropyl alcohol to clean my brushes afterwards, but you shouldn’t use this to thin down the paint as it isn’t food-safe. Vodka isn’t high enough in alcohol.
  • Pipette or dropper – for adding drops of alcohol (optional but very useful)
  • Toothpicks or ice cream sticks for mixing the paint
  • A small empty jar or plastic container – to put alcohol in to clean your paintbrush between colours
  • and of course, some paintbrushes… 
Four fine-tipped paintbrushes on a mint green background.

You’ll need one or two very fine paint brushes for outlining, and a couple of slightly thicker ones for the colours. I started with cheaper brushes like these from our local emporium shop, but I do much prefer the brushes from Sweet Sticks, and I also have ones I really like from Sugar Crafty.

Prepare Your Fondant Cake

Painting on a cake will be infinitely easier if you have a great base to work on. The straighter and smoother the sides on your cake, the easier it will be to trace your image neatly onto the cake.

I suggest ganaching your cake, as the ganache will give you a much firmer base than buttercream will, and be much easier to work on. Check out my How to Ganache a Cake post for info on ganaching a cake for perfectly straight sides.

Then once your ganache is set, you’ll need to cover your cake in fondant. My cake was an 8” tall, 6” round cake, and I wrapped it with fondant and let it dry.

It’s much easier to paint a detailed design on fondant than it is on buttercream, which is why I’m showing you how to paint on a fondant cake.

Your fondant needs to dry for at least 12 hours (24 hours is best) before you try and paint on it.

Yep, it’s so important that I wrote it in bold and italic. If your fondant is too soft, all you’ll succeed in doing is denting your cake with all manner of finger/knuckle/thumbprints and possibly even tearing through the paper with your pencil.

If you can’t press your finger gently against the cake without it leaving a mark (try it somewhere inconspicuous), then it isn’t dry enough.

Tall, pale blue fondant covered cake, on a white acrylic cake board.

I also like to roll out a piece of leftover fondant and leave that to dry. It’s very handy to use that piece to test out your paint colours and consistency before you start painting on the cake.

Prepare Your Image to Trace

Time to pick out your image. If you’re drawing the design yourself, then you’ll need to draw it onto a sheet of paper, and then trace it so that you have the reverse image (see more on this below).

For this cake, I purchased this pretty dreamcatcher clipart set off Etsy.

If you’re selling your cake, make sure you check the copyright rules for the image you’re using – usually, there will be details of that on the purchase page – and purchase the commercial license for the design if necessary.

A dreamcatcher design printed onto paper and then traced onto another sheet of paper.

To make it easier to trace, you can choose a design that has a black outline, but if it doesn’t have one, you can just trace an outline around the edge yourself.

I decided not to do the whole dreamcatcher so I cropped the top section off, leaving me with just the feathers, ribbons and beads. I used Photoshop to do this, but any image editor with a crop tool will do the job. Then I resized the remaining image to fit my cake. I then traced that image onto another piece of paper, ignoring the last remaining part of the dreamcatcher ring and continued the strings and ribbons up to the top (you can see it in the photo below).

Note: Because I adjusted the design slightly by not using the top part of the dreamcatcher, I was working with a pencil design on both sides of the paper. If you’re just printing out the design and using it as-is, you’ll be working with the printed design on one side, and pencil on the other.

I’m going to describe the process below as if you’re printing out the image and just using that. If you want to see better visuals, you can check out my painted cookies tutorial – how I trace the design onto a cookie is what I’m describing here.

Print out your image onto regular A4 printer paper. Flip the paper over and hold it up against a window (or a lightbox, if you’re lucky enough to have one of those) and trace the design onto the back of the paper using a sharp pencil.

You don’t have to trace all of the very small details (for example with my image, I didn’t trace all the lines on the feathers or all of the lines on the braid) as you can add them in by eye when you paint the black outlines on your image.

To trace the design onto the cookie, you’ll need to use a pencil. Pencil “leads” are not made of actual lead, they’re made of graphite, which is considered non-toxic and not dangerous in the small amounts used to lightly trace a design onto icing.

If you’re not comfortable with that, you can carefully trace it onto slightly soft fondant to leave a debossed design that you can then paint over. Follow the directions below, but skip the step of pencil tracing the design on the back of the paper, and press slightly harder when tracing the design onto the cookie. However, the design will be much more difficult to see.

How to Trace a Design Onto a Cake

Traced dreamcatcher design on a sheet of paper.

Trim the paper so that it is the same height as your cake. You can have the paper smaller, but there is a chance it will shift up or down when you’re tracing the pattern, so having it the height of the cake is helpful. My cake was 8″ tall, so I trimmed the paper to exactly 8″ high.

Now we need to add some more paper so we can wrap the whole thing around the cake. I used waxed paper for this, but you can use another piece of printer paper if you prefer.

Traced design flipped upside down, with another sheet of paper taped to one edge to make a long strip.

Cut a piece of paper the same height as the cake, and long enough to cover the back of the cake where the design ends. Tape one side to the edge of the design, then wrap it tightly but gently around the cake, pencil design side against the cake, and secure the other end with tape.

The traced design wrapped around the cake, pencil side down, and taped in place.

(Remember, if you’re using a printed design, the printed side will be facing out, and the pencil-traced side will be against the cake).

Now you can start tracing the design. Use a slightly blunt pencil, so you don’t accidentally poke through the paper.

You don’t have to be precise here, you can either trace the lines exactly, or gently scribble over them, it’s up to you. Just make sure you go over each line of the design.

Be careful not to dent the cake with your knuckles as you trace.

Close up of the design being traced over onto the cake.

At this stage, if you’re worried that you have dented your cake a bit with your knuckles, you can rub around the cake with a regular fondant smoother (or even a flexible fondant smoother will do) to smooth it out a bit. It won’t get all dents out as the fondant is set, but it does help a bit. It also has the bonus of helping transfer the pencil lines onto the cake, so you can even give it a rub even if you’re not worried about dents.

Double-check that you have traced over every line, and then you can remove the paper from the cake.

The traced design on the front of the cake.

Right, now take a moment to psych yourself up, coz we’re going to start painting!

How to Paint on a Cake

Put drops of edible paint into your palette, and thin them down with a drop of alcohol or lighten them with a bit of white paint if necessary.

Test out the colours and consistency on the scrap piece of fondant to make sure they’re looking how you want them to.

A paint palette with drops of edible art paint.

Exactly how you paint will depend on your pattern/design, but the basics will be pretty similar to what I did on this cake.

We’re going to ease into the whole painting thing by starting with just the outlines of the feathers. It’s helpful to keep the print-out of your image nearby so you can consult it if there are bits of line missing or if parts are too pale to see.

If, like me, you have unsteady or shaky hands, try experimenting with the best angle to hold your arm at, and where possible, rest your elbow on something. That could be the bench for the lower parts of the design, or an upturned bowl or something, just to prop your arm up so it’s not shaking like a broken tree branch in mid-air. 

I also find it helpful to hold my right wrist with my left hand while I am painting for a bit of extra support. Check out this post for more tips to keep your hand steady.

Close up of the feather design being outlined in shades of pink and peach edible paint.

You don’t have to be too precise here, we will be outlining in black later, but it’s a good guideline for the next step which is…

All the feather sections of the design filled in.

…filling in the design. Use strokes of varying thicknesses for a bit of detail. I also thinned my paint down a bit to start with, then added in more strokes of the full-strength paint. See, it’s almost like we know what we’re doing!

Keep an eye on the consistency of your paint, the edible art paint does dry out quite quickly, but a drop or two of alcohol will have it good as new.

Keep going for the rest of the parts of your design. After the feathers, I moved on to the ribbons and braid details…

Painting in the ribbon sections of the design with blue and green edible paints.

…then the beads…

Adding in the bead string details in pink, purple and yellow shades.

Now all that’s left to do is outline the whole thing in black. You don’t need to outline if your design doesn’t need it, but boy does it really make it pop!

This is probably the fiddliest part, but I’m going to encourage you to look super closely at my cake and see that there are a fair few dodgy bits, that most people would never notice at first glance.

So remember that the design as a whole will distract from a few slips here and there. Really. I promise. Don’t panic!

Make sure you work from left to right if you’re right-handed, or right to left if you’re a leftie, the last thing you want here is smudged black across your design!

A close-up image of the black outlines being painted around the design.

Refer to your original design for any additional details that you didn’t trace, and add those in.

It’s hard to see in the pictures but I added a bit of the Edible Art rose gold metallic paint on the peachy-coloured beads. Because a bit of shimmer is always welcome.

The outlines really tie the whole design together and make it pop.

Close up image of the cake design, with all the feathers, beads and ribbons outlined in black.

And there you have it, one painted fondant cake design. I can do it, and you can too. I won’t call myself a painter, but until the day comes that Michaelangelo’s ghost taps me on the shoulder and bestows his gift upon me, I’m pretty happy at what I can achieve with this tracing and painting technique.

Once I finished the first cake I even did it a second time to make a little matching candle cake, since the perfectionist artist in me didn’t want candles marring my masterpiece 😉

Boho Inspired Hand Painted Cake Tutorial ~ Sweetness & Bite

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I hope you enjoyed this cake painting tutorial! If you try this technique out, remember to pop over to my Facebook page and show me or tag me in your pic on Instagram (@sweetness.and.bite). I love seeing your work!

Natalie
xx

A pale blue fondant-covered cake with a bright dreamcatcher design painted on the front. Text overlay reads: "How to Paint on a Fondant Cake".