This should be a no-brainer for me, as I typically never struggle with colors or planning out a cake.  However, I made this Hello Kitty cake for a friend's daughter's birthday: 

This has actually been one of my favourite cakes to date, it didn't photograph as well as I hoped it would, but the colours just came together perfectly and it was so sweet looking. 

A friend of hers who was at the party asked me to make the exact same cake for her daughter's upcoming birthday.  A few weeks ago, she e-mailed asking if I could make the exact same cake but in pink and purple instead of the two shades of pink. 

I am struggling to visualize how to make this cake in pink and purple without it looking tacky!  I don't know if I'm getting hung up just because I loved the colours on this one so much, but I just can not picture it pink and purple in my mind. 

How would you do this cake in pink and purple?  What shades of pink and purple would you use and what elements would you do pink and what would you do purple?  Or would it just end up impossibly tacky and should I see if I can talk her into doing it white with pink and purple accents? 

You could cover the cake in purple fondant and put a purple number in the heart.  Or do the bows purple with the purple number and maybe a few purple flowers.  I think it would look just fine!  I"d use a lighter shade of purple.

AHow about light purple almost pastel colors? But I think it will look amazing as this cake. Good luck hope to see pictures of the end result.

Where ever you used the darker pink use purple. I also think it would look great if the bow and name were purple. Definitely a light shade of purple. The colors will look really good together. Google pink and purplecakes and look at the images and you will see how well they go together

Well, here it is.  I took off the big pink ribbon that circled the cake and just trimmed it with a thin white strip, as it looked really awful with the big pink strip.  I don't love it as much as the other one, but it's not bad. 

AI like the second one better ;) But I love purple! They're both nice-I think the white border was a good call, I really enjoy the way you integrated all the colors it's not overwhelming

I love it! Purple and pink are one of my fav color combos

I like it...and maybe even more than the other one because I like softer colors. You did a great job..I'm sure the customer was very happy.

Wow, love both the cakes and think I kinda prefer the purple one better :)

I love them both! You did a great job

AVERY NICE!! I love them both .. good job! :)

Thanks!  She just picked it up, she loves it.  I'm still partial to the pink one, but I do like the flowers on the purple one. 

It turned out great. But I agree with you -- I like the first one better.  In my experience, the first time I design a cake, I've picked the best possible colors for the design. I often groan a little when a customer wants another color scheme and tells me they know I'll make it look beautiful. It's not always possible to make the colors they've chosen pop the way the others did in the original design.

I have a ladybug design in pink that I'm always getting requests to change to red. I've done it a couple of times and to me it looks awful in red.  So finally I designed something new that works better with red and when I send them the pics of the original design with red subbed in for the pink, they always go for the new design.