A bride-to-be wants to have this cake done for her wedding in June. The sizes of the cakes are 12", 8" and 6" The bottom tier is in chocolate and the other two tiers will be dummies. She wants the flowers and vines in purple instead of blue.

In light of this, can I get assistance with the following questions:

Can I use Americolor violet to get purple?
Should I add dowel rods to the bottom layer (what tutorial you recommend)?
There is a glossy look to the cake and flowers, how was this effect achieved?
Is there a tutorial on how to make the vines on the cake?
What flowers is this and the tutorial for same?
The border for each tier looks like mini pearls (not edible), could you confirm?
What size of cake board is recommended?
 
I saw craftsy is offering a course on making swags etc, so I will sign up for it, with about two weeks to go before the wedding, there is still time.

Any other suggestions to execute this wedding cake will be appreciated, thanks.

The cake did not post. Cannot see what you are talking about.

How do I insert an image? I'm not seeing the option where there is 'bold', 'italic' etc.

DDarkey, upload it to your gallery for now so we can see. 

In response to one of your questions , use Regal Purple (americolor) to make purple, you'll have to add something to the violet (blue?) in order to get purple otherwise . I also find that color doesn't fade into blue over time. 

Frank

No offense, but a lot of questions for a wedding cake.  Is this your first one?  Have you never done purple before?  Are you sure you're up for this?

The shiny/glossy look is achieved by airbrushing a white pearl color onto it after it's complete. The vines are probably just fondant through an extruder and the pearls do look non edible (like a plastic string of them). I would think that you would still need supports as dummies can be heavy especially covered in fondant. You can do a search for the techniques either on here or on google. Two weeks does not give you much time to practice and make the cake if you have never done these techniques. Good Luck.

@ jgifford I'm up for this. I did a wedding cake before. It's been a while since I've done a cake. My passion is calling me back to caking and support from friends and family, so I'm up for the challenge. I think that's the only way I can learn through practice/actual orders and improve along the way.

Feel free to look at my work on FB and leave your honest comments, thanks.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cakes-By-Kerry/139318522760393

Thank you dkltll. Two weeks does not give me much time. I recently purchased the video on craftsy about swags. I work and I am also a freelance writer, I also have a family, but I will burn the midnight oil, practice and posts all pictures soon. I'm not from the U.S. so I hope I get the extruder for sure. Thanks for the support and look out for pics.

Without a pic it is hard to advise but here are some general ideas:  I don't see any need to dowels in the cake with the upper tiers being styrofoam.  Yes, depending on how thick you make the fondant they might be a tad heavy but I haven't that to be a problem.  As for the 'glossy look' it could be obtained by steaming the cake?  Use a hand-held clothing steamer.  As to the size of the cake board it needs to be *at least* 2" larger than the cake so if the bottom tier is 12" the board should be between 14" and 16".  Can be larger depending on what the bottom tier decorations are.   Hope that helps some:)

Hi all,

I posted the photo, Here the link:

http://www.cakecentral.com/gallery/i/3343762/purple-and-white-wedding-cake

Please take a look and tell me what you think. I think I can improve a bit.

Thanks!

Kerry