Add the melted pink candy to a piping bag and snip off the tip.

Note: If you don’t have a piping bag, you can use a plastic sandwich bag with the tip of the corner cut off.

Pipe the melted candy into your mermaid tail mold. It’s okay if you overfill the molds a little bit.

Place the mold into the refrigerator for about 5 minutes.

Once the tails are dried and set up, gently remove them from the silicon mold,

Using a food safe paint brush, brush some of the pearl edible shimmer onto the pink tails.

Repeat this process for the blue candy melts to make 6 blue tails.

Tip: Making the tails are easier if you have 2-3 molds to do at the same time. If the candy at the end of your piping bag starts to solidify, just push that bit out until the candy melts are flowing again.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large mixing bowl on medium speed, mix together cake mix, water, oil, and egg whites.

Add 3-4 drops of teal gel food coloring and mix to combine. You can add extra color, if you want a deeper shade of teal.

Place cupcake liners into a 12-cup muffin tin. Fill them about 2/3-3/4 full of cupcake batter.

Place them in the oven and bake according to the package directions, at 350 for approximately 18 minutes. You’ll know your cupcakes are done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Allow the cupcakes to cool to room temperature before frosting.

Cake batter poured into muffin cups

In a large mixing bowl, use your stand mixer or a hand mixer to beat the butter until smooth.

If the vanilla buttercream frosting is too thick, add an additional tablespoon of milk, if it is too thin you can add 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar at a time to get it the right frosting consistency.

Add 3-4 drops of pink gel coloring to the first bowl and mix to combine. You can add more if you want a darker shade of pink.

Spoon the pink frosting onto a piece of plastic wrap that’s about a foot long and wrap up the ends.

Repeat this for each different color.

Once you have your three frosting colors wrapped up, snip off one end of the twisted plastic wrap.

Prepare a piping bag with a 1M star tip, and place all 3 together into the piping bag.

Push the frosting down to get it started.

Tip: In my experience, for best results, push some of the frosting out on some parchment paper before you start on the cupcakes. This helps you get an even amount of the 3 colors when you’re frosting.

Frost the cupcakes using a swirling motion.

Finally, add the mermaid sprinkles and one of the candy mermaid tails to the top of each cupcake.