Joshua John Russell's Woven Diamond Texture Tutorial

Joshua John Russell is well known for finding cake design inspiration in the fashion world. On his blog The Fashion Caker, Joshua walks readers through his process from start to finish for creating this magnificent masterpiece, which he calls his “Ode to (Alexander) McQueen.”   Here’s what Joshua has to say about creating the bottom tier’s woven diamond texture:

So to start, I cover the cake in this pink fondant and make my [diamond] impression.  Then deepen the lines with a gumpaste [dresden] tool. Next, I start roughing it up…but only every other diamond.

So here is part one…finished. Looks a little cray cray at the moment…

Now I am taking a different color (this wine color) and rolling it out.

And then I use the same impression mat on this to get my lines.

Now I cut the diamonds apart.

I am going to place them one at a time.  So I keep the others in a plastic bag so they will not dry out.

I paint the back with a little piping gel.

And place it in the untextured diamond space.

Now I texture each one the opposite direction as the diamonds in light pink.

Here is the end result…”