Jungle Animal Cupcakes

My friend Kelly requested jungle animal themed cupcakes for her birthday in lieu of a cake..so here they are.! It took awhile to make them all since I had to mix all the different colors..so that's why there is only six. I got the basic idea for the elephant and the monkey from a cake decorating book I have, but the others I just created. For the elephant, I melted white chocolate and colored it light blue, then formed the shape for the ears and trunk on wax paper, and put it in the refrigerator a few minutes until it was set. When they were ready, I iced the elephant cupcake light blue, attached the trunk and ears, used a toothpick to highlight the ears with white icing and the trunk with blue, made the eyes, put blue sprinkles on his head, and rolled a small bit of gumpaste for the tusks. For the monkey, I iced the cupcake with dark chocolate icing, and rolled the top of his head in brown sprinkles, colored white icing light brown and formed his face and ears. I used the chocolate icing to form a mouth, nose, and ear marks, sprinkles for eyebrows, and chocolate chips highlighted with white icing for his eyes. For the crocodile, I iced the cupcake in several different shades of blue swirled together and added blue sprinkles too. I formed the crocodile out of gumpaste colored with green food gel, and used chocolate icing to highlight and dirty him up a bit. The lion I iced yellow and then swirled together light brown and orange to form his mane, and added orange sprinkles. The zebra I iced vanilla and added stripes of dark chocolate, used chocolate chips highlighted with vanilla for his eyes, and hot pink ears and nose for accents. The tiger is iced orange, with dark chocolate stripes and mouth, and muddled white sideburns.!