A Real Pair of Characters!

I had a request – at fairly short notice – to make a cake for a set of twins who had chalked up 40 years of age.  I had never met either of them, so when I was asked to put figures on the cake to represent them I thought it would be a bit of a challenge!  Fortunately, I was also told that they both dabbled in sports with Sue being part of a Morris Dancing Troupe and Tony being an avid (Liverpool) football fan so this gave me something to include to suggest who the two characters might be.  I was given access to a photograph of the uniform for the Morris Dancing Troupe and, of course, the Liverpool strip was easily found for reference!  The colours of these ‘kits’ rather dictated the colour theme for the cake so it was then just a case of creating the characters.

Over the years I have done a lot of life drawing and sculpting so am fairly familiar with representing the human form in 2 and 3 dimensions – but using sugarpaste reinforced with CMC  as a medium  has its own challenges!  I wanted to try to make the two figures’ positions reflect their different sexes and so tried to do a fairly demure pose for the ‘girl’ and a rather more blasé pose for the ‘boy’.

I am really quite pleased with how it turned out and the lovely lady who ordered it said it brought a little lump to her throat when she first saw it so I think she was fairly pleased!  I hope Tony and Sue liked the little pair of characters too!

Hey…Mario!

Well – here he is…my Mario, feeling on top of his own little world and in full control of the situation!

It has provided me with hours of entertainment and I hope everyone enjoys having a good look at all the little bits and pieces that I have put on there.

The whole of the big green pipe, complete with Mario, lifts off and can be kept as a memento and since it is made of really strong, reinforced sugarpaste it has set like concrete anyway and so would be a tough piece to eat!  All the rest of the decoration is made from standard sugarpaste and so will be eaten as part of the cake.  I hope it all goes down well!

Since I have made the cake with a running frieze of Mario’s world around the edge I thought it would be a good idea to try to video it so I could have a permanent reminder of what it was like…and since we have all this technology at our fingertips it seemed silly not to have a go – so , hopefully, I have a video of the cake doing a little pirouette at the end of this post.

I hope it makes you smile!!

Level 1 – Cleared!

I think perhaps I am the only person in the world who has not played any Mario game…in any format…ever!  So this cake has been something of a voyage of discovery in a land of the weird and the wonderful for me!  I have done hours of research and sketching and just hope that I have not included any massive faux pas in the frieze that I now have running around the bottom level of my grandson’s birthday cake.  It has taken me hours and hours of patient application of tiny little shapes of every colour and hue and I have even developed a way of creating spotted and striped sheets of rolled out sugarpaste which is something I have every intention of developing for use in other more exotic cakes.  All in all, I am really happy with my day’s work.

As for the great man himself…he is currently sitting in his pipe and is spending the night and possibly much of tomorrow on the boiler, firming up his joints and getting really strong and tough!  It’s not easy being the star of the show you know!

I hope to be able to film him in situ, on top of the cake tomorrow but until then you will just have to make do with repeating this level….

Pipe Dreams…

Can you guess what it is yet??

I have just made a start on the next cake that I have to make this week.  This one is due for delivery on the 12th and it is for my grandson’s birthday…. and it is being made to reflect one of his passions!!

I have started with this sugarpaste piece as it needs to be given a chance to dry into a good firm base for the main part of the decoration.  It will go on top of the cake that I am making and there will be a lot of decoration going on around the edge of the cake as well.  Or, at least, that is the plan!  As I start I wonder if the vision I have in my mind for the final look of the cake is just a ‘pipe dream’.

Still..I must have faith in myself!  I will start in earnest bright and early tomorrow….and hopefully I will have a bit more to show you later on tomorrow.

Until then…have a guess…  What do you think the theme of this cake is going to be???

Cakes, cakes, cakes, cakes, cakes…..

Well I am sorry that I have not posted for a while but I have not been idle…just short of the time to write about it all.  I think my best bet for now is to post it on here in one big splurge!  All I can see on the horizon for now is just more cakes!!!  …not that I’m complaining! …just a bit surprised by the power of ‘word of mouth’ recommendations!  Sadly it means that my jewellery making, designing and experimenting has gone out of the window for a while but …that’s the way the cookie crumbles!

So here is evidence of my ongoing sugar flower production line for a wedding cake in June…nearly finished now!  I still have the rose leaves to wire together and the actual bouquet arrangements to do but I can see the end in sight now!  30 roses of various size, 60 white filler flowers, over 100 ivy leaves and 60 or so rose leaves!!  Quite a marathon…

But then I had to interrupt things to make a ‘Minnie Mouse’ inspired cake and cupcakes for a little girl called Amelia…who was 4.  Her Mum sent me a photo of a cake she wanted but as I don’t copy things I had to put my own interpretation onto it.  Her Mum seemed to be quite happy with the result though.  I had not done cupcakes for anyone before so there was a bit of frenzied experimentation and research for the best cupcake and topping recipes ever!  Eventually I was happy with what I created…but individual members of my immediate family put on about 2 stone in weight as a consequence of my quest!!  So, here is the cake and a few of the cupcakes…

Then my granddaughter was 7 last week and wanted Peppa Pig as a ‘Fairy Princess’ for her party table centrepiece!  Sometimes the easiest things present a challenge! Obviously her delicate little toesies would be unable to carry her enormous weight so she had to be sitting down…but even so, when you have a head which is almost the same size as your body you are bound to encounter problems with gravity!!  This was one top heavy cake! … as my daughter discovered when she decided to cut into it without beheadding the ‘cute little piggy’ in front of a group of soft hearted young ladies!  Taking a couple of ‘rashers’ from the hind quaters poor little piggy decided to do a nosedive instead!!  But here she is as delivered to the birthday girl…

There are still cakes on order up until the middle of June…  But I will try to keep up with a few more posts on here before then!