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Made this for the latest Colour Boom issue of Cake Masters Magazine (May 2016) as part of their Ombré Cake Collection. I was assigned the colour Blue. I have a mini-tutorial for my simple V-Petal ruffles, on my blog.
Made this in March 2015 for Emily's 19th birthday. The boot topper is made from fondant/gumpaste mix. I have a tutorial for it on my blog.
Made this in December 2014
Made this in August 2015 for the 2015 Holiday Issue (Oct to Dec) of Party Cakes Magazine. I was super surprised and happy that it was chosen for the cover =D
Made this in May 2015 for a Zuhair Murad Fashion Inspired collaboration that was featured exclusively in Cake Craft Guide's Wedding Cakes and Sugar Flowers Magazine
Made this in August 2015 for Cake Masters Magazine, with full tutorial
I made this for the September ADORE Fashion Issue of Cake Central Magazine. I was honoured to be asked to contribute and loved my inspiration piece so of course, had to agree. I used edible lace for the bottom tier, an extruder for the top tier, James Roselle's Craftsy class for the orchids and a two custom blends of lustre dust, one for the top tier and one for the bottom tier. Hope you all like it and TFL - Violet =D
Made for the recent Pretty Pink for Yasmine tribute collaboration.
Made for the Red Carpet Collaboration Feb 22nd, 2015.
This was my Icing Smiles cake for the 2015 calendar! June was my month and as it has the first day of Summer (yeah baby!!), I wanted to do something beachy! My inspiration was a photo I found that perfectly represents the beach to me (see last photo). The top tier is wafer paper painted with my oil and petal dust technique which you can find out more about in my blog and on my FB page. I used the Marvelous Molds splash onlay from one of our wonderful sponsors for the 2nd tier. The confetti technique found on The Cake Blog was used for the bottom two tiers which I then painted with Wilton white gel colour mixed with some brown. The Muskoka (I’m Canadian so I call ‘em this) or Adirondack chairs are made from gumpaste with individually cut pieces that were then painstakingly sugar-glued together. I made the hibiscus flowers using my good friend Gulnaz’s (of Heavenlycakes4you by Gulnaz Mitchell) tutorial which is awesome because you only need a standard round cutter and basic tools. It was my first wired flower too and she made it easy for me. All the fondant used was supplied by another awesome sponsor, Satin Ice! TFL – Violet =D
This is my first cake of 2015… Made this for my brother-in-law’s milestone 45th birthday. I wanted to practice the gumpaste poppy I recently watched on James Roselle’s Craftsy class and wanted to try my hand at a bit of hand painting too. So when I saw an abstract poppy painting (see last pic) while shopping the other day, a perfect design that married the two ideas popped into my head. The bottom tier is a replica of the painting and it is my first attempt at any kind of actual painting on a cake. I decided to use buttercream so that I could mimic the textured paint-laden feel of the art piece I saw. It is buttercream painted ON a buttercream iced tier. I chilled the bottom tier well, before painting and would pop it back in the fridge between layers or colours. I topped the cake with a gumpaste poppy to contrast with the 2D nature of the painted tier. The veiner and flower formers I ordered for the gumpaste version did not arrive in time but I was able to use a bit of innovative thinking to get the petals to look at least halfway decent. I made my own perfectly shaped formers out of aluminum foil and veined the petals by hand using the veining tool. It is far from perfect but I was pretty happy with the overall effect of the 2D/3D mix techniques and am SO relieved it at least looked like the painting that inspired it haha! Hope everyone is having a great year New Year so far and TFL!!
Hoping everyone has had a VERY Merry Christmas and are enjoying their holidays so far! Here is my family Christmas cake for this year for which I used an unconventional colour scheme, as I wanted to do something untraditionally traditional. So, I went with traditional elements and colours that are found around Christmas time, but used black as my canvas. Black is a traditional colour during Christmas time because it is part of Santa’s outfit, but not traditionally used as the main colour on Christmas cakes. And I finally was able to incorporate some gumpaste mistletoe in this year’s design which were made following a tutorial found on The Cake Blog by Petalsweet Cakes. I used my two-toned petals to create the stylized poinsettias but used just one tone. As well, I wanted to wrap it all up in a lovely Christmas bow and could not help but fall back on the much loved two-toned bow idea that I first saw on a cake by Sweet Picasso Cake Creations (available in tutorials section of Cake Central). I used wafer paper to create the stylized Christmas tree on the bottom tier, as well as some of the feathers on the cardinal. I had wanted to cover the entire cardinal in them however ran out of time…it took me more than 2 hours just to make the ones I used! Flavour was Pumpkin Spice cake with Swiss Vanilla Buttercream – YUM! Hope you all like my take on a holiday cake this year. Violet
Transformers Optimus Prime Helmet cake based on the voice changer helmet toy. This is all cake with an 8" square tier and a 6" double barrel (7.5" tall) sitting on top, detailed to look like the helmet. I did not carve the top tier...all the details and depth was added on by layering on panels of fondant. All covered and detailed in homemade marshmallow fondant. You can see the post on my FB page for more details in how I added the detailing. TFL - Violet =D
I had the honour recently of being part of my 2nd ever collaboration, to spotlight the Festival of Lights celebration or Diwali. For my contribution, I took inspiration from the many elements used in this beloved celebration. During my research, I discovered that Diwali is marked by many symbols and traditions such as the use of lotuses, rangoli chalk drawings, henna tattoos, bright & richly coloured fabrics and lanterns as well as diyas or clay candle burners. So in my design, I included wafer paper lotuses, a rangoli/henna inspired decal on the middle tier using rangoli inspired colours and a gumpaste hollow diya with an actual candle. I tried to represent the rich colours and textures of Diwali with the lustred tier, gold trim and ornate décor. I wanted to fuse modern techniques like naked ganache, brushed tiers & wafer paper with more traditional ones like quilling and cake lace. This cake was not without headaches, one being that the topper broke several times and took over 6 hrs to complete! This does not include the 5 hours spent on a larger version that also broke while assembling, but irreparably. and I could nitpick this cake all day long as my hubby loves to complain that I do ALL the TIME…but this is one of the closest I’ve come to my vision so in the end I’ve learned to love her (yes, she’s become a “her” through the long process haha!) The topper is made from gumpaste using Rose of Couture Cakes by Rose’s Christmas Bauble tutorial. The cake separator is made from chocolate marshmallow fondant that has been allowed to dry for a VERY long time before assembling. It’s actually a piece I saved from a cake I made MANY years ago. I’ve used it as a small cake stand for a few cakes before. The lotuses are made from wafer paper and coloured using the technique I discovered while playing around, of mixing petal dust with oil. It makes for a much more vibrant and deep colour than using straight dust alone. A little goes a long way too which saves money! You can see more in my blog post (August 8th entry – http://bit.ly/ColouringWafer ). The middle tier is lustred with lustre dust after I rub down the fondant with shortening and wipe off the excess. Then the quilling is done by hand. The ganached tiers are lightly brushed with an edible gold iridescent paint for a rustic finish. The gold lace is made by adding some ivory, then mixing in gold lustre dust with edible cake lace. Thanks to my good friend Dina of miettes for this method =D Hope you all like her and TFL! =D
My daughter is obsessed with Mickey & Minnie so I wanted to do a cake for her birthday that had them as well as Daisy and Donald on it, without it looking like the typical Mickey Mouse Clubhouse designs you see with the bold primary colours because well quite frankly, I wanted to do a more girly cake! But I also did not want to do the typical Minnie Mouse design with the pink & white polka dots and Minnie heads. So…I hemmed and hawed and waffled (as usual), trying to come up with a unique approach to Mickey & Minnie. I couldn’t come up with anything that was still Clubhouse related, so decided to throw caution to the wind and just use colours and design inspiration from one of my fave jammies of hers. So this is the result and I was quite happy with it in the end. I finished it off with my two-toned bow that was originally inspired by one done by Sweet Picasso Cake Creations (tute for bow can be found in the tutorials section here as well as in the Album section on my FB page). I made all the figures with help from tutorials by Jacinta of Kidacity (Minnie Mouse) & Diletta Contaldo (Daisy Duck). I didn’t follow them exactly but I KNOW I couldn’t have made them as well as I did without the help of those tutes (links can be found in the posts of this cake on my FB page)! TFL – Violet =D
I dreaded being asked for a Minecraft cake like so many others, knowing how much work it would be to cut out ALL those piddly squares! But I could not deny this family as they are one of my best and longest customers. So I set about wanting to make something different but also find a way to save some time with the squares. So I thought this was a great opportunity to FINALLY use my new airbrush that I won from Dinkydoodle and made my own grid stencil to use for the squares on the brown portion. I thought I could save some time using the airbrush, but I ended up still spending a good 18 hours on the cake, 8 of those just on the bottom tier panelling, airbrushing and cutting and applying the squares. The airbrushing attempt on the first layer of squares worked ok until I tried to line up the stencil on the second and third layers with different shades of the brown and ended up not having them line up enough for my taste. So I had to go about cutting out brown piddly squares after all and apply them so the gaps were not so obvious lol. At least I was able to save some time since I did not have to make as many. This was my first time airbrushing, so I still have to work on getting the hang of getting a more even spray and being able to get different shades or depth of colour. Also, after I had applied about half the protruding green squares, my son came by and told me that that was not authentic to the game. Argh…I was just going by a graphic that I saw that I really liked because it had some depth to it (see last pic) and it was too late to go back at that point. So, needless to say after this experience, I hope I am not asked again anytime soon for another Minecraft cake because I am sure I will say ‘NO’ lol. TFL.
This cake was for my SIL’s birthday this year since I was not able to make her milestone birthday last year. She loves green so I wanted to incorporate that as the main colour. I had wanted to do a semi-naked ganache cake for a while with decorative elements in colours that would be bold and different so decided to try that for her cake. I couldn’t decide at first what colour scheme to use to go with the green, but eventually settled on what I call “chocolate citrus” which included tangerine, lemon & lime as the citrus colours. In the end, I decided to brush on some gold iridescent colour on the ganache to give it a more rustic look. My SIL likes all things sophisticated yet girly so I wanted the design to be a little bit rustic, a little bit sophisticated but a whole lotta stylish. I used the Marvelous Molds Morrocan Onlay for the bottom tier and jewel molds from Way Beyond Cakes by Mayen’s Etsy shop. Love her molds! TFL – Violet =D
I was given complete free reign by the client and although I love that SO much because I can get all creative and try new things, it is also daunting because I have nothing to go by, not even a colour preference…so I worry if it will be well received. It’s the perfect double edged sword…lol. Well, she loved it…PHEW! The colours were inspired by Kristen of Bliss Pastry. I love her use of blues accented with gold and I wanted to make another semi-naked ganache cake so I combined the two ideas. Next, I wanted to add some pink to make the pink peony pop. The pattern on the bottom tier, believe it or not, was an idea I had for my sis’ birthday cake WAY back in 2009…yes 5 years ago!! But because I did not have enough time, I ended up only doing one row for her cake. If interested, you can see a pic of it on my FB page in the comments section of the post I made about this cake. TFL – Violet
This was the first Lego Movie cake I made for a friend's son's birthday. This was the one that my son saw and just had to have a Lego Movie cake for himself. After having done two Lego Movie cakes and 6 3D Lego figures, I was asked by many how I made the figures so I put together a tutorial to show how I did it. I will upload that here in the next few days. TFL - Violet
Managed to get this finished even though both kiddos were sick earlier that week and two parties to plan and prepare for. My son loved the Lego Movie cake I made for a friend's son so much that he insisted on one for himself BUT it had to be designed especially for him! He wanted the motorbike from the movie which is a lot more complex than this one and the plan was to make it with all the trimmings. But I just ran out of time because of the kids being sick, so I had to make a VERY simplified version just to have some kind of motorbike on the cake. After having done two Lego Movie cakes and 6 3D Lego figures, I was asked by many how I made the figures so I put together a tutorial to show how I did it. I will upload that here in the next few days. TFL - Violet
IT’S A SUPER CAKE MOMS COLLABORATION! 49 cake artists from around the world recently came together to honor a very special group of people…MOTHERS! Moms wear many hats: chef, hairstylist, chauffeur, wife, nutritionist, maid, wardrobe consultant, referee, gardener, nurse, entertainer, accountant, teacher…..all this and without receiving a paycheck! We wanted to celebrate our own Moms and Mothers across the world by creating beautiful floral cakes that are as diverse as each of our Moms. Each artist chose a flower and created a cake to showcase it. We hope you enjoy our collaboration because it was made with love. I was so honoured to be asked to be part of this group of spectacular sugar artists! Pinched myself a couple of times actually lol. I wanted to represent my mom AND my motherland so I chose Lotus which is a very symbolic flower in Chinese culture and represents purity of the body, speech, and mind. The Lotus is a large flower, sometimes half a foot wide, that blooms and rises out of muddy waters and floats above it, which is what I wanted to represent with the bottom tier. The ponds and water it grows in, in China and other Asian countries often also have bamboo which I used on the top tier and which also symbolizes the country of China where both sides of my & my husband’s family are originally from. Being a serious non-flower person (only first touched gumpaste in December) I am nervous to post as there is SUCH amazing talent here and I feel SO blessed and fortunate to be part of this collaboration!! It didn’t turn out exactly as I wanted and I was conflicted big time by the bottom tier, but I hope you all like it! Thanks to Ana & Eva for organizing such a meaningful and amazing collaboration to honour some of the most important women in our lives! This was my first collaboration and I was so excited and nervous at the same time.
Made this double barrel tiered cake for my sis’ milestone birthday that we celebrated last weekend. This is my first cake utilizing a floral spray! Have always loved cakes that had lovely florals and never did one as I was never very happy with the overall look of my sugar flowers. I decided to mix my own stylized sugar versions of real flowers (peony & ranunculus) with some fantasy flowers just because I’ve always liked the mixed look that I’ve seen done by others. I wanted to use Spring-like colours with a modern & trendy pattern to reflect my sis’ personal style. I saw a colour palette (with golden yellow, aqua, teal, burnt orange, dark grey and pink) that I loved on Design Seeds (see last photo) and decided to use a slightly brighter version of that for my colour scheme. The geometric pattern on the bottom tier was inspired by the popular tiling pattern that is often used. I made the octagon cutouts using my square cutter. I made a quick tip sheet that I've uploaded to my FB page on how to make the octagon cutouts with a basic square cutter. My sis loved the cake and felt it reflected her personality perfectly. TFL – Violet =D
This is likely the last year I can do my own cake and do a style from my cake bucket list so here it is…my Steampunk XLIV Birthday Cake! XLIV is 44 in Roman Numerals which I think is fitting for the Steampunk genre as a lot of clocks and time pieces use Roman Numerals. And fitting too because this design ended up being so time-consuming – over 30 hours just on making the decorative elements and decorating the cake. This does not include the time to bake and make all the fillings, fondant & ganache, nor to fill and ganache the tiers. I used Jo Orr’s (from Ciccio Cakes) edible sugar lace recipe & tutorial that is available at Operation Sugar Ltd to support a worthy cause. It was AMAZING and SO easy to use! LOVE it as it stayed so flexible even after a few days so will be doing lots more lace now! Of course I had to use purples and I chose Pantone which is the Colour Trend for 2014, mixed with some darker hues to stick with the Steampunk look, however the colours show up a bit grapey or plum in the pics. Hand painted all the gold detailing with lustre dust and the filigree lace molds and key and lock molds were from Way Beyond Cakes by Mayen. Also used the Marvelous Molds Damask Onlay for the bottom tier and the cakeboard. Gears were handcut. TFL – Violet =D
Year of the Horse themed cake for Cake Central's Chinese New Year Inspiration Challenge. Was going to do a cake for Chinese New Year anyway but then saw there was an Inspiration Challenge for it and the inspiration photos on the Pinterest board immediately got my design brain thinking. I knew right away how I would like to incorporate many of the elements of the board into the design. I ended up using 6 photo inspirations. Was going to make it out of real cake but then with the tight timeline from when I discovered there was a challenge, I didn't have time to bake so just used dummies. I'm really loving how it turned out. Used the Marvelous Mold Damask On-Lay to create the petals for the peony on the bottom tier. I again used my two-tone petal ball topper on this cake since the Pinterest board had a flower ball as part of the inspiration photos and how could I not use it? Lol. This was lots of fun! TFL. Violet
The first of my two Christmas cakes for family dinners this year. This one is for tonight’s Christmas Eve dinner with my parents. Will upload my other one after we have that dinner tomorrow, Christmas Day. This one is using my newly acquired Marvelous Mold Damask on-lay. I did it just on a ganached cake but I was having problems with my ganache being too soft =( so it was not going my way! Almost gave up but just kept plodding along. The side that you see is the only good part of the pattern lol. At least there is a part that looked good enough to share! The penguins are a la Cake Dutchess on FB, or Naera here on CC. Her figures are just too cute and she does free, easy to follow tutorials too. TFL & Happy Holidays to ALL!
Here is the 2nd of my two Christmas cakes I made this year for family dinners. This one was a design I had in my head for ages so although we did not need so many servings, I had to make a 3 tier to incorporate all the ideas that were floating in my head. The middle tier therefore is a dummy cake. I used my two-tone petals again to make up my Christmas tree and as the petals that surround the ranunculus in the middle tier and of course on my wreath topper again. I was SO happy with how my ranunculus turned out! I used gumpaste this time and let my petals form their shape in soup spoons for about 30 mins before applying them. I used my own method of making the ranunculus after studying tonnes of ranunculus flowers I saw on other people’s cakes including The Crumb Coat, Kara’s Couture Cakes’ wafer paper version and Anna Craig on CC. The cake itself on the other hand did not turn out exactly as planned. I had wanted the reindeer to be centred in the bottom tier but I had a few issues with a new recipe for Pumpkin Spice cake that I was experimenting with (who else to experiment on than family? lol). The cakes came out of the oven nice and fluffy and I couldn’t have been happier. But as they cooled, they settled and the fluffiness became denser and I lost about an inch and a half on each tier. So the reindeer would no longer fit in the centre with the ranunculus flowers overhead so I had to improvise and move the reindeer to the right. I actually think it ended up better over there…at least I tell myself that lol. ENJOY and blessed New Year to ALL! TFL.
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