Hello.  First post here in the forum though I posted pictures of my cakes in the gallery.  Here's my dilemma.  My boss is a Fisheries Biologist who loves to pick berries and garden, and is also a music lover.  We host concerts every month in our building and he is always front and centre!  I am expecting about 60 people so was thinking a 10"-8"-6" tiered cake.  My tiers are always 4 cake layers, 3 of filling, roughly 4" tall.  So at 32 pieces + 20 pieces + 12 pieces = 64 that size cake should work.

I have some time since this won't be until September 11 but I started brain storming early, to gather any supplies I'll need and start gumpaste work.  Just melding the themes of "fish/gardening or berry picking/music" isn't so easy!  I thought the much more experienced cake decorators here might have some ideas?  Thank you in advance.

I include pictures of what I came up with, thus far.  I thought the entire cake would be a dark blue (Fondx) with PME Pearl Lustre spray.  Bottom tier would have clusters of red currants & blueberries (what grows at our building and he picks yearly).  Middle tier would have cake lace music notes.  Top tier would have a fish emerging from the top or side.  Each tier will look nice BUT very disjointed and not exactly one cohesive piece.  Any ideas?

Lynne

I think it sounds lovely but agree it's not quite coherent. Could the musical notes flow into the water or maybe have stylized fish (koi carp?) swimming along the musical staff? 

Maybe it could start at the bottom with a vine with berries on that turns into a musical staff with musical notes on then flows into waves with fish swimming along it. 

Thank you for your input!  I'm having the background color for all 3 tiers the same to help it look more cohesive.  I was thinking that too, having some elements flow between tiers to "connect" the themes.  I think your idea is fantastic!  So bottom with berry vine around the tier, going up to tier 2 where it "flows" into the musical staff, then that would flow up into the "waves" of the top tier.  

Though I love the idea of having fish "swimming" with the music notes, I'm not sure how I would execute this.  That's a cake lace mould so it's one piece.

Thank you again!  I think this would create a nice flow between the layers.

Lynne

So instead of the cake lace running like this:

Wow, that's a HUGE picture!  Sorry about that.  So there the cake lace runs straight horizontal.  If I run it more diagonally it would "link" better to the waves on the top tier and the berries on the bottom tier....maybe?  Hard to picture this but I think it's my best bet for tying the 3 tiers together.  And this is assuming that this is possible with the cake lace to begin with!  I've never used it so am unsure how much you can manipulate it.