Striping the icing - Spongebob Cupcakes

It is Valerie's birthday and she wanted Spongebob cupcakes.  Of course, what else does a 17 year old want right?  The wrappers were Wilton and were pretty cute except that they are thin and the color of the cupcake kind of bleeds through the wrapper and so they weren't magnificent and bright (and we like magnificent and bright!)

 We were wanting to give the top of the cupcakes a feeling of the ocean...and Spongebob of course, so we decided to use a "striping" technique with the frosting.  This shoots a specific color out of the bag on only part of the icing stream.  It's fun to do it with different colors because you can kind of get a wavy/tie-dye effect.

You will want to use a disposable icing bag.  I've always used paste food colors and painted "stripes" down the side of the bag and then put the frosting carefully into the bag on top of it.  We were out of the paste colors I wanted (yellow and light blue) and so used what we had which were gel colors - you can buy them in the grocery store in the baking aisle.  I think it worked well enough! We used a size 32 star tip and swirled the tops in individual circles.   I think that while they each turned out a little different - probably due to the semi-liquidy colors and the 100 degree outside temperatures we were experiencing (and thus melting icing)  - they are pretty magnificent when taken as a whole.

Here are a couple of pictures of two of the difference tops so that you can see the details: