For this cake I used the Indigo mesh stencil and used American buttercream for both the background and stencilled layers.
After coating my cake with the second layer of buttercream, I put it in the fridge for an hour so that the buttercream was set.
I then coloured a small amount of buttercream and used the food gel to make the buttercream thinner to allow it to go through the tiny holes in the mesh stencil.
Once the cake had chilled, I placed the stencil on the side of the cake and applied the thinned buttercream with a spatula. I then used a scraper to scrape off the excess and this also helped to push the buttercream through the stencil.
I gently peeled off the stencil and voila!
Some tips would be to make sure the cake is really cold, this is so important because otherwise the stencil will pull off areas of the background buttercream layer.
The thinned buttercream consistency should be similar to a thin royal icing that would be used for piping.
Also, darker colours tend to work better as you generally need more food colour. For a lighter colour, I would add a small amount of milk to get the buttercream to the right consistency.
By Natasha from @mallowbynatashamistry