While the Versace dress is stunning as a whole, I was initially attracted to the unique geometric lines, particularly in the bodice.  Also, the vibrant color scheme is so beautiful!  I loved the combination of the shades of blue, burnt orange and black.  

Initially I felt a bit overwhelmed with different ideas about how best to represent the elements of the dress in cake form.  I actually sketched four other ideas, but none of them felt right to me.  One night I awoke in the middle of the night with the idea of making the top two tiers concave.  I actually got out of bed and sketched my final design at three in the morning!

My first step was to work on the shapes of each tier.  This included both the concave tiers as well as the bottom, angled section of the base tier and the “risers” on which the bottom and center tiers rested.  I did a lot of measuring to ensure that the relative proportions reflected my sketch.  

When I sketch a cake design it’s easy to make changes and play around with ideas until I get the perfect representation on paper.  So I like to work as closely as possible from my sketch because, although it doesn’t always work out exactly as planned, most times it helps to avoid needing to make changes while I’m working.  Many times, however, I will add elements to the cake that were not in the sketch.  In this case, I added the beaded trim on the bottom two tiers, and changed the centers of the flowers to the beaded look rather than black to give it a pop of fashion feel.  Once I’m decorating I often think of ideas that hadn’t occurred to me before!

The artist in me often has a hard time feeling finished with a cake and many times I continue to think of things that could be added to “take it up a notch”.  But I have to say that I’m truly proud of the way this cake turned out!