The cake...

The cake didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.

I had grand plans of creating a stencil and spray-painting the cake with Wilton aerosol food colouring spray (= poor man's airbrush). Unfortunately, the colour is water-based, so when you spray a lot of it on butter-cream frosting, it just tends to bead up, and because the black in particular was so ... weak... I was spraying a lot. I emptied the whole can on that climber, and still managed - at best - a middling grey colour. So disappointing. The red and the yellow went on a lot better. A few caveats if you ever want to use this stuff yourself:

1. Don't use the black. It sucks rocks.
2. Have a big plastic proctective sheet (drop sheet, old shower curtain, cheap $1 tablecloth from the rama) under your cake to catch the over-spray.
3. Work in a well ventilated area. You end up with an atomized fog of food colouring floating in the air where you're working. I thought I had protected everything quite well, but when I mopped the kitchen floor afterwards, my bucket water was red! Like cleaning up after a murder. Not that I have any experience with that sort of thing.

Anywho. All things considered, it's at least recognizable. Just not as good as I was hoping for. Oh, and I splurged and bought a tube of proper black frosting for the border. What a great idea that was. I'd never have managed to mix anything darker than charcoal grey myself.