I had a person at church approach me about making her son's first birthday cake today and I'm trying to get a little info on actually making it before I make a committment. I have a couple of questions that I hope the experts here can help me with.

The cake will be a crab sculpted out of a 12" round cake, covered with fondant and I will make fondant legs off the cake body. For the sake of my sanity I'm going to buy red Satin Ice from GSA, which leads to my first question; about how much will I need for something like this? I haven't done enough fondant work to be able to guess. Would the 2lb pail be enough or should i go with the 5lb?

My next question is the dreaded "how much do I charge for something like this?" I realize that different areas of the country will have differing prices as well as what type of cake and fillings she chooses so I'm not looking for you to tell me what I should ask. I would appreciate some ballpark "I'd probably charge about $XX.XX for that cake" so I have some idea because I really am clueless. I haven't even decided if I want to do it yet but if I do I don't want either of us ripped off.

Thanks in advance for the help!

I finally found a chart on Global Sugar Art's website that tells me roughly how much fondant to use so never mind.