This cake was for my mother's 70th birthday. Since 2 of her favorite things are flowers and birds, and her birthday was on the first day of spring, I went with flowering dogwood branches and goldfinches (one of her favorite birds). The sky blue is also the color of her aquamarine birthstone.

The birds were made by pressing fondant into a candy mold, and then painted with food color diluted with vodka. The flowers were fondant, made with a plunger cutter, and dusted with apple green and honeysuckle pink petal dust. Everything else was buttercream, including basketweave on the sides of the cake.