2D Buttercream Painted & 3D Gumpaste Poppy Art Inspired Cake

This is my first cake of 2015…

Made this for my brother-in-law’s milestone 45th birthday. I wanted to practice the gumpaste poppy I recently watched on James Roselle’s Craftsy class and wanted to try my hand at a bit of hand painting too. So when I saw an abstract poppy painting (see last pic) while shopping the other day, a perfect design that married the two ideas popped into my head.

The bottom tier is a replica of the painting and it is my first attempt at any kind of actual painting on a cake. I decided to use buttercream so that I could mimic the textured paint-laden feel of the art piece I saw. It is buttercream painted ON a buttercream iced tier. I chilled the bottom tier well, before painting and would pop it back in the fridge between layers or colours.

I topped the cake with a gumpaste poppy to contrast with the 2D nature of the painted tier. The veiner and flower formers I ordered for the gumpaste version did not arrive in time but I was able to use a bit of innovative thinking to get the petals to look at least halfway decent. I made my own perfectly shaped formers out of aluminum foil and veined the petals by hand using the veining tool.

It is far from perfect but I was pretty happy with the overall effect of the 2D/3D mix techniques and am SO relieved it at least looked like the painting that inspired it haha!

Hope everyone is having a great year New Year so far and TFL!!

Comments (3)

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It was a lovely class fearlessbaker.  I'll admit, I've only watched part of it so far (the parts I needed to, to make this flower) but he is quite informative and has an easy-going, calm style.  The Craftsy classes are perfectly laid out so you can skip around if you prefer.  I had fun shooting my class and can see the benefit of them shooting it the way that they do =D

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WOW!!! AMAZING!!! How did you paint on the BC design? did you water down the BC so it went on smooth? I need to do Zebra stripes by next week and am researching how. thought of painting them.

can you tell me in detail how you did it, Please?