How to Create Your Own Custom Rainbow Cake

By Ashley Arrow 

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Rainbow cakes are the easiest way to get a wow from your client! The colors blend beautifully and effortlessly to help simple designs look like you put in tons of work. Rainbow Cakes have gained popularity over the past 2 years and it’s rare to see a painter without at least one in their kit. We hand make all of the Silly Farm cakes in house, and our chief Silly Farmer, Heather Green, sits down and creates each rainbow cake personally.  And while it seems that we have covered all the possible combinations, we still get lots of requests for custom cakes. Because we make them in house, we offer the custom rainbow cakes so you can get creative and choose your own colors!

So how to you create the best blends, color combinations, and choose the width of each color to ensure an awesome blend?  Start with the color wheel. What are contrasting colors? What could I use as a highlight?

The color wheel is so helpful to point out complimentary colors and blends
The color wheel is so helpful to point out complimentary colors and blends

The most important thing to remember is that contrasting colors do not work well next to each other. That’s because when blended, they turn a brownish muddy color. So you will want to avoid purple and green next to each other, and if you are going to use black as an edging color, make sure that the black is a very small amount to avoid overpowering the cake.

Avoid the following color combinations 

  • Red and Green
  • Orange and Blue
  • Purple and Yellow

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If your team colors are purple and yellow, try putting a color in between them like white or gold. This will allow you to have your team colors without your designs looking muddy.

 

When you need a highlight or shadow, use lighter and darker colors on the ends of the cake. A good example is our Bright Rose Arty Cake is a great example of highlight and contrast in one cake

Our Bright Rose Arty Cake is a great example of highlight and contrast in one cake
Bright Rose Arty Cake from Sillyfarm.com

. This cake is made specially to create dimension in your roses. The dark pink/ red creates a perfect outline and water color blend for your roses  and the white creates your highlights.

 

Another example of a practical color combination is the Bright Leaf Arty Cake. There is a small amount of black to create an edge and outline. The black is so thin that it doesn’t bleed too much into the other colors. But it was designed that way. When Heather designed most of the color combinations she had to play with the sizes of each color to make sure that too much lowlights and highlights didn’t drown out the other colors.

 

Silly Farm carries over 100 different Rainbow and Arty Cake combinations and Global, TAG, and Wolfe also produce a variety of rainbow cakes too. So, if you aren’t the type to want to sit down and create combinations- we have got you covered!

If you have a combination you want to share and think others will love it too send us an email to heather@sillyfarm.com so we can have a sample made. If it’s popular you will receive that cake free for life!

I hope this helps your creative endeavors! Good luck and happy painting!

-Ashley Arrow

Ashley@sillyfarm.com

2 thoughts

  1. Such great advice, I loved this post as most won’t go into great detail about the colour wheel, brilliant. Im a face painter in the UK – Bath and Bristol and I make my own layer cakes to use at childrens face painting parties etc… and this was the best explination of how to put them together I’ve found. Thank you…. Suzanna XXX

  2. I agree, I love the post! I learned how to do this from my mom, but I love your take on how to make rainbow cakes! Your explaination does go a little bit more in-depth, I will share this with other face painters around my area too!

    Thank yoU!

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