The Making: Stilletto shoes and Leopard Print Birthday Cake!

Hallowww there sexpots! Today's post is a wild and sexy one..like literally..It's all about sky high heels, leopard prints, the fiery red colour and classy gold and some pearlised jewellery. Yeah I liked making this cake as it was a chance for me to make something that I've long wanted to do, which was a stiletto heel.

Okay, so I started with some gumpaste and shaped the heel. I wanted to achieve a height that that would literally bend your feet till it was almost anatomically impossible and would impress even the most discerning fashionista out there.

Once I shaped the heel, I inserted a lollipop stick into the middle of the heel to straighten and steady the gum paste heel till it dried. 

In the meantime, I cut out gum paste shapes of the front of the shoe and the ankle straps as well as the sole which is not shown here. I basically drew the required shapes on paper and traced it on the rolled fondant and the cut the shapes out.

Once the heel had dried, I attached the sole to the heel. Prior to attaching the sole to the heel, I dried the sole  into shape by leaving it on a styrofoam which was cut to resemble the curve of the heel.

Here I attached the ankle strap and the toe strap with gum paste glue and let it dry. I made sure the straps stayed in position and kept it's shape by stuffing some soft tissue to hold it up.

After that I rolled out some red fondant to cut out the cushioned layer of the sole and made a bright red ribbon to be attached on the back of the ankle strap.

Here is how the ribbon looked like once attached.

And from behind ..

And the side.

While waiting for the shoe to dry completely, which took about a day, I rolled out some more red fondant to cover the cake board.

For the deco on the side of the cake, I used the Karen Davies brooch mold which I bought from the UK. Here I dusted some corn starch to prevent the fondant from sticking on the mold.

Then I rolled some white fondant..

..took it out from the mold and produced this. 

Of course to enhance the shape of the brooch,I dusted some pearl dust..

to produce this.

I then dusted a little bit of gold dust to produce an even more realistic dimension to the brooch.

Now on to some paintwork. To create the leopard look on the cake, I used some metallic light gold food paint.

I painted some gold splotches on the shoe and let it dry.

In the meantime,I covered the chocolate cake with ganache..yumm yumm..

After I covered the cake with ivory colored fondant and covered the borders with some pearl fondant strips,  I started painting on the cake itself. The prints didn't have to be all uniform in size and was randomly shaped to make the prints look more natural.

Next, after the gold paint had dried, I painted on some black food colouring surrounding the gold prints. Once that was done, I left it to dry a little.

Now for the red flower, I rolled out some red fondant and used various sized round scalloped cutters to cut out the flower shape.

Then I ruffled it with a dog bone tool.

Then I left it to dry on the flower formers before stacking and gluing them one on top of the other.

Then I made a dark center for the flower and stuck the flower on a red strip of fondant which was wrapped around the cake. I thought that looked so pretty.:)

This is where the cake got personalised. I spelt out the birthday girl's name on my alphabet imprinter and imprinted it on a strip of ivory fondant and stuck it on the middle of the sole of the shoe. How cute is that!

Sky high heels complimented by a fiery red flower!

View from the top.

Phewwwh! That was a lot of typing...haha..yup a pretty simple looking cake but a lot of work thrown into it. I loved that it demonstrated and represented so many techniques in cake decorating from gum paste construction, paintwork, mold work and sugar flowers. 

So there you have it..a stylish cake for a stylish girl and her friends! Woohoo!

The Making: Tigger Birthday Cake

Hi, all! I've said in my earlier posts that I suck at figurines. Okay..maybe I'm being over dramatic. Maybe I just feel that figurines are so much work and knowing how I'm such a perfectionist at doing things, it adds on to the pressure of decorating my cakes. I always have to get it exactly right and that sometimes takes the fun out of it. I've realised now that any art should be fun. Once I had that in my mind, making figurines got a little bit more enjoyable and fun. (I still think it's a lot of work though!)

Truthfully, all the figurines that are in my blog, I've never learned from anyone and I don't even own books concerning on how to make these cartoon character figurines. My tools for this are my eyes...and a little bit of brain power and deciphering. I can somehow look at a pic of the object that I need to replicate and produce the same image into fondant. It's a gift really haha..yeah yeah..me and my braggy self needs to shut up! Seriously though, it does take a lot of thought. Perhaps I should take a short cut and buy one of those Debbie Brown books to make my life a little easier. (FYI: Debbie Brown is a famous cake decorator who produces a lot of books specialising on figurines and cartoon characters.)

So let's cut the crap and get on with it, shall we? As with any figurine, you gotta make the basic shapes first.The head, torso and legs in the desired position must be made. I'm sorry if I don't give step by step instructions on how to do this. I hope you are as visual as I am. If you really want to learn, well, who knows I might give classes one day haha...basically teach you on how to use the dexterity of your hands.

Then on to the face of our happy Tigger. I stuck on some yellow cutouts on the eyes and mouth area. 

Basically you gotta catch that happy and slightly crazed expression of Tigger..if you can't, you'll only end up having an ordinary tiger in your hands.

Side view with his cheeky tongue sticking out. After that, I let it dry a couple of days. See this is what some people don't get. Most of them think that I do all of this in ONE day. The truth is take several days for me to finish even one figurine. I have to let the frikin thing dry to be firm first before doing any further decorating...so it takes time people. I'm not a super-figurine-made-in-a minute kind of person.Like I said I'm a perfectionist, hates to be rushed and would rather take the time to produce a great masterpiece :P...but enough about me..haha..

So next, the cake. Here I demonstrate how I use the cupping method to smoothe the edges of the fondant.

Then I cut out haphazard strips of black fondant to produce the tiger stripes.More of this technique is shown here.

The bottom borders were made up of rolled orange fondant to resemble a tiger's tail. I then painted on some stripes unto it with black food gel paste mixed with a little clear vanilla as shown above.

Views of the cake from all angles. Oh! I forgot to tell you how I made the tail of Tigger himself. Well, I basically twisted some wire and covered it well with some orange gum paste and again painted on the stripes. Let it dry and stuck it on his butt!

So there you have it a jolly 2 tiered Tigger cake complete with stripes and a tail! Fit for a two year old boy born in the year of the Tiger! Roarrr!!

The Making: 2 Tier Garden Themed Wedding Cake

Garden weddings are sweet and lovely. Same goes for this cake. The red roses however , gave a nice pop of color to an otherwise mellow cake.

I made two sizes of posies. I just used rose cutters and cut some rolled gum paste with large, medium and small sized cutters.After that, I frilled up the edges using a ball tool, let them dry on its own and the once dry, stacked them on top of each consequent size using royal icing..

This were the small flowers with medium and small rose cutters and a smaller petal in the middle.

I put some royal icing on the back of the flower and stuck them on the cake starting from the bottom and letting them dry first. Once dry it will be steady enough to support the flowers being glued on the top part of the cake.

This is how it looked like once all the flowers were glued on. I think there were more than 80 of them to cover an 8 inch cake.

I realised the flowers were looking a bit too plain..so I decided to brush on some gold dust in the middle of each flower to give it some depth and colour.

I dabbed on some gold dust and lightly spread the colour from inner to outwards using gentle strokes.

For the red rose bouquet on top of the cake, I used a hydrangea cutter to produce little flowers on wires to act as fillers.

This is how it looked like from the top.

Close up of the roses. So loooovelyyy...

This is how it looked like after airbrushing some pearl sheen..So there you have it, a garden themed 2 tier wedding cake.Simple and oh-so-flowery..hope you enjoyed your read :))